
Ask HN: Weekend project stories - arsalanb
What is the shortest duration you&#x27;ve worked on a project? This means a complete project, from ideation to deployment (bonus if it got many users and press coverage)<p>There are the likes of Facebook etc, which started out as weekend on-the-spur hacks and led to huge companies. Has anybody in the HN community had such an experience?<p>Please mention how long it took you, what stack you used, link to the project would be appreciated, and some metrics to give us an idea how successful the project was.<p><i></i><i>
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commanderj
A friend and I worked on a typical weekend project lately. A Font Awesome to
PNG online generator ([http://fa2png.io](http://fa2png.io)). I was great fun.
It took us about 24h total from concept to live deployment. It's a flask app
deployed to digital ocean.

We were on HN in 2nd place for about half a day. Got about 17.000 unique
visits in the first two days, a couple of twitter mentions and now about
200-300 visits a day.

It was an awesome experience. Very satisfying because it felt kind of complete
when we launched. That's not typical for a web app. Although there are always
more features to add. We felt like the app is exactly doing what we planned it
should.

I wrote about it in more detail here
[http://jannikweyrich.com/blog/2014/05/26/weekend-project-
fon...](http://jannikweyrich.com/blog/2014/05/26/weekend-project-font-awesome-
to-png.html)

~~~
brodney
I need this basically everyday. I develop iOS apps and need pngs for icons all
the time, and I'm just not that handy with photoshop yet. Please don't let
this app die anytime soon!

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roschdal
[http://play.freeciv.org](http://play.freeciv.org) \- took just 5 years.

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ChrisNorstrom
I'm a designer (and front end coder) trying to learn php & javascript.

[http://Affordabl.es](http://Affordabl.es) \- 7 Days - 1and1 shared linux
hosting + Wordpress + I customized the crap out of a free wordpress theme =
Catalog of affordable design products with affiliate links to Amazon (has made
$0 so far)

[http://ResidentEvilRadio.com](http://ResidentEvilRadio.com) \- 4 days - 1and1
shared linux hosting + sound manager 2 mp3 player script from codecanyon.net =
jukebox of my favorite songs from my favorite game franchise.

[http://TimeForZen.com](http://TimeForZen.com) \- 2 weeks? (worked on and off)
- sound manager 2 api + hand coded pages = meditation and nature sounds
website.

Not a single one of these projects are successful. But they help you gain
experience and can land you a job. Anyone applying for a gig can put
"experienced in google maps api" on their resume, but putting a link to a
fully working site using the Google Maps API bumps you to the front of the
line.

1) Do not underestimate the value of little projects. You'll be amazed at how
much experience and re-usable code they produce.

2) It's hard to put a time-frame on how long it takes because the requirements
change often due to restrictions and dropped and added features. This is true
for those who aren't experienced coders. We end up having to scale back
projects to get them done.

3) Play perfectionist and you'll never get your projects done. It's better to
cut features, finish early, and use the "ego high" of getting a project done
to go back and add features. The longer you keep a project in development and
unlaunched the worse it gets and the harder it is to finish. Cut half your
features if you need to. Just launch quickly. Also, after launching you'll be
amazed at how many "features" were not needed.

------
brotchie
[http://howfastisthenbn.com.au/](http://howfastisthenbn.com.au/)

Took about 12 hours total. Ended up with with 200k+ uniques within a few days
of launch, 65k Facebook likes, ~8k Tweets, nation wide press coverage.

Didn't change government policy though :(

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dully
Last year I made my first iOS app as a fun side project that solved a problem
I had - waking up on time. [http://spinmealarm.com](http://spinmealarm.com)

I spent most of my reading week making the app, and then another 2-3 weeks
polishing it. A few months later I decided to post it on Hacker News as a
"Show HN". It only got a few upvotes but a TechCrunch journalist somehow saw
it and decided to write a post on it. It's done pretty well in the App Store,
reaching #1 in its category at one point. Nowadays it hovers in the Top 100
Utilities category.

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iisbum
A couple of friends and I built a twitter hashtag voting site for the WorldCup
in about 12 hours.

We've got about 1000 votes in the first couple of weeks.

[http://www.hashtagvote.me/](http://www.hashtagvote.me/)

Site was built using Laravel, and is hosted at DigitalOcean

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shlomib
'Complete' ([https://complete.li/](https://complete.li/)) took about a week
and got some press coverage (wired.co.uk, dailymail.co.uk and more..)

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NameNickHN
[http://www.cakedayreminder.com/](http://www.cakedayreminder.com/)

Took two or three days.

