

137 Rails ideas hacked together in 48 hrs - slay2k
http://r09.railsrumble.com/entries

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cubicle67
A few notes from someone (me) who competed:

* Extremely well run. zapnap, if you're ever in Perth, I'll buy you a steak. awesome job guys.

* There's a comment about the longevity of the entries here. Can't speak for others, but I entered just for fun and for the experience. I built something quick and simple that I planned to throw away, however...

* The quality of the feedback was fantastic. The criticism my app received was very constructive (and justified :), but there was also some very positive feedback, enough that I'm going to take what I've created, keep working on it and keep it going.

I entered as a solo entrant, and my app was pretty simple but there's so much
I learnt; for example, setting up a server. I've never done this before
(always had someone else to do it for me), but I've had to learn how to get
everything up and running from nothing. Too me a stupidly long time to do, but
I had a great time doing it.

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texel
This was my first time competing and our entire team had an awesome time. We
had the idea for quippopotamus for months, but Rails Rumble finally put the
fire under our collective asses to actually build it.

The organizers truly did an amazing job, and we can't wait for voting to end
so that we can act on the feedback we've gotten and start making improvements.

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johnbender
Really impressed by some of the ideas and execution. Great stuff.

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slay2k
Inspiring, to say the least.

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jacquesm
It sure is! But here's a question: How do these "I hacked together 50 websites
overnight" sites stack up in the long run ?

I've gone through a couple of those lists now, including a large number of
'rate my startup' type posts on HN and usually when I visit them a couple of
weeks later there is either nothing left of it or the site has been taken over
by spammers.

It's like with children, making them is easy, supporting them over their
lifetime is hard, very hard.

So, what's the story, how many of those 'one night hacks' make it in the long
run ?

~~~
zapnap
Here are a couple previous winners:

<http://tastyplanner.com> <http://meetinbetween.us>

Both are still running and doing quite well. Although no one has made a
million dollars on a Rumble exit quite yet, we're looking forward to the first
one :). Maybe someone will buy us a steak for organizing the event heh.

~~~
zapnap
Here are a few more:

* <http://prioritizd.com> * <http://bidbuildbill.com> * <http://jot.ly> * <http://imatightwad.com> * <http://qflip.net> * <http://trackclass.com> * <http://whatdoesthiserrormean.com> * <http://remindr.info> * <http://www.riverdex.com> * <http://www.learnbylikis.com> * <http://so2speak.net> * <http://pictmeme.com> * <http://ndebted.com> * <http://pricepounce.info>

~~~
slay2k
Just curious, zapnap, but I didn't see any useful information on the site
about finding partners. I saw a list of project suggestions and interested
people, but none of finding partners local to your area, or how the existing
teams found or knew each other..

~~~
zapnap
That's a great question. Up to this point we've really assumed that most
people come to the table with a team or potential teammates already in mind.
One thing we could certainly do better in the future is providing mechanisms
through which teams can find collaborators (they don't need to be in their
area though, of course, since the competition is completely virtual).

If you check the discussion list and do some Twitter searches you'll find that
many teams advertised that they were looking for collaborators that way.
Still, probably not the best mechanism for that.

~~~
thismat
I commend you on this and wish I had known about it sooner. What a great way
to allow people to practice so many skills and have so much fun as well.

To expand on the previous post and your post as well, some sort of "team
finder" would be really cool.

Great, great job.

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jrockway
Judging by how nice most of these sites look, I think this was more of a web
design contest than a programming contest. Let's see the code.

~~~
zapnap
You really want to make judging code a part of an innovation competition? I
know some have gone that route. But personally, I can't think of a more
subjective thing.

Most commercially viable web applications find their success through execution
of their idea and connecting with an end user audience. So it seems, to me,
like the best way to judge their likelihood of success in the "real world" is
by reviewing the end product rather than the integrity of the code.

If they didn't write tests, if their authorization code is full of holes, if
there are XSS vulnerabilities everywhere -- end users are going to find these.
They're also going to comment on them, and these comments will affect other
ratings and overall public opinion.

I'm a developer myself and of course I have my opinions about the 'right way'
to write code. But judging from that perspective isn't part of the contest for
a reason. Not that it's wrong, it's just not the perspective that we're
approaching it from.

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Tichy
Some cool projects. However, a small tagline would help a lot with browsing
the list.

Edit: just saw that the long list has descriptions.

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vaksel
i bet a lot of people cheated, no way some of those ideas only took 48 hours
to develop

~~~
cubicle67
It's not obvious if your comment is serious or tongue in cheek.

Prior to the competition, teams can prepare as much as they like, with pretty
much the only proviso being no creation of any digital artifacts. This means
no code and no digital artwork can be created before the 48hrs starts, but
teams _are_ allowed to do as much non-digital (ie. pencil and paper) prep as
they deem necessary.

Sure, there's room for people to cheat if they wish, but I think it's
disingenuous to throw out a "i bet a lot of people cheated" comment instead of
perhaps crediting them with good planning, hard work and skill.

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tvon
pet peeve: having to scroll a page to find the 'close' link on a lightbox.

~~~
javaru
Just click outside the lightbox, this works 90% of the time.

