

Ask HN: What have you been working on this summer? - endriju

A lot of us spend summer time working on a side project, be it a business idea, meme generator or OS project.<p>What have you been working on this summer? How many days did you spend working? Was it worth it?
======
fundamental
I rewrote an older llvm/clang based static analysis tool for asserting
properties about a given callgraph for use with C/C++ programs
[http://github.com/fundamental/stoat](http://github.com/fundamental/stoat)

This one only really took a few days to get it working to a reasonable degree
and it was worth every minute to replace the older project with maintenance
issues. Other projects were worked on of course, but none of them are at a
nicely completed stage.

------
sethish
I forked Project Gutenberg to github[0]. I've been doing some some work on
newsdiffs[1]. I'm working on a python library for dealing with Library of
Congress Subject Headings[2]. And I'm trying to get access to and release
hundreds of syllabi collected via universities via FOIA request[3].

[0]: gitenberg.github.io [1]: newsdiffs.org [2]:
[https://github.com/sethwoodworth/LCC](https://github.com/sethwoodworth/LCC)
[3]: [http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/u-of-wisconsin-will-
turn-o...](http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/u-of-wisconsin-will-turn-over-
course-syllabi-to-group-seeking-teacher-prep-data/53689)

------
jtfairbank
I launched a new version of the Election Analytics project for the 2014 Senate
elections. electionanalytics.cs.illinois.edu I've spent 230 hours on the
project since January, its definitely been worth it. I've learned project
architecture, automation with Grunt.js, leadership skills, and lotsa others in
my role of undergraduate team lead. I am looking to transition out of the
project tho... its time to move on to the next thing. :)

I also learned how to business in preparation for founding a startup. Probs
spent 100 hours on reading, discussions, and practice pitches.

------
michaelbuckbee
Finally got my side project (a SSL add-on for Heroku) launched:
[https://addons.heroku.com/expeditedssl](https://addons.heroku.com/expeditedssl)
\- It had been kicking around as half finished for almost 6 months.

"Worth It" is a tough one as it's still mostly losing money even though people
constantly complain about how expensive it is.

~~~
endriju
Would be great to see an addon like this for OpenShift, too. Even though the
ssl cert. setup there is quite simple, one still have to be careful.

~~~
michaelbuckbee
It's on my list - I'm working on Azure right now and then probably OpenShift
after that.

------
OGiR
As a CS student entering into my second year and feeling a little drained from
studying theory, this summer I spent a lot of my time learning practical
skills and technologies and coding for fun.

I've been learning HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JQuery, PHP, Apache, MySQL, Bash,
Ruby, and Android. I've also been using Linux regularly for the first time, as
well as Vim.

The main projects I have been working on are my personal website/blog, a text-
adventure game in Ruby, A js game using Canvas, and working through the
chapters and exercises of "Beginning Android 4 Application Development" (feels
like a tome).

~~~
atmosx
Sorry but having a hard time mastering only 3 of the words that you've put
together here (being already familiar with Linux and vim), how exactly do you
"learn" JQuery, PHP, Ruby and Android in 3 months?!??!?!?!

I'm asking out of real curiosity, I'm not judging or anything.

~~~
OGiR
Well, for JQuery I have been reading tutorials on W3schools and practicing
with toy web pages and using some for my personal website. For Ruby, I have
been reading the pragmatic programmers book, as well as documentation, and I
was playing around with the language by writing a text-based RPG. For PHP I
needed to learn some basics to get my wordpress site online, but I also have
been reading a book on the LAMP stack, and the w3schools tutorials are very
helpful. For Android, I am already familiar with Java, so I have been reading
the book I mentioned, as well as the documentation, and working through the
practice exercises, as well as tinkering with them.

I don't work on these all at the same time, but since I am out of school for 4
months in the summer I have had a lot of time to spend a couple weeks working
on one project, and then a couple working on another, and so on. I don't have
a schedule for myself, but I try to do some programming every day. There are a
lot of technologies I would like to learn; I have a whole career in the future
to specialize and learn something VERY in depth.

Also, I'm a quick learner ;)

EDIT: Forgot to add Git to the list in the first post. Something else I
started using this summer.

~~~
mcintyre1994
I hate to discourage someone whose obviously a really practical learner but
just a note that last I checked a fair amount of w3schools things on
particularly php were a bit dodgy around security and dealing with now
deprecated things.

Php has says to make things really insecure and unlike your book on Ruby which
probably shows you the right way to do things there, w3schools doesn't tend
to. It's not a huge deal while learning if you're a quick learner and don't
get bad habits but it's worth being aware of and looking into if anything gets
serious.

If you want a really over the top look at why some people don't recommend
w3schools, check out w3fools.com

If you're looking for a solid php resource with a more modern and secure
approach I'd recommend
[http://www.phptherightway.com](http://www.phptherightway.com)

Overall it's probably just worth noting that wherever w3schools recommends
something you wouldn't do in Ruby it's not because you should do that in PHP -
and it'd be worth looking in your php book or other resources for the right
approach in PHP.

~~~
OGiR
Thanks for the words of caution mcintyre. I am pretty new to all this, and my
approach for learning outside of school is to just build things, and figure
out the bits I don't know along the way. So when I need a quick reference to
something, the w3schools tutorials are always a quick easy way to look at code
snippets.

I have been spending a lot of time lately studying outside of school, but it
can be difficult to know what to read, what to code, what to learn. So I
appreciate the feedback from knowledgeable people very much.

I have seen that the pragmatic programmers write very good books that have
great reviews so I will stick with them for sure. I will look a bit more
critically at w3schools, though, and I will definitely check out the php site
you recommended.

I would love to hear more advice from people in the industry on what I should
be learning and how I should be learning. If you have any ideas about how I
should work on more practical things outside of school to give me real world
skills I would be grateful for an email: bcgir87@gmail.com

------
pkinsky
I wrote a Dvorak practice program in Haskell that uses QuickCheck to generate
random pseudo-scala practice sets.
[https://github.com/pkinsky/dvorak](https://github.com/pkinsky/dvorak).

------
ac360
JSON Archetypes – Open-source JSON Models For Popular Types Of Data!

[https://github.com/servant-cmes/json-archetypes](https://github.com/servant-
cmes/json-archetypes)

I've been writing these non-stop for a few weeks now. Let me know what you
guys think. A simple star on github could help get this project some traction
and perhaps we can one day come up with the best possible representations of
every type of data there is :)

------
recalibrator
A psychological fitness regime for dying. That's all I can say for now:
[http://eepurl.com/XXOnD](http://eepurl.com/XXOnD)

~~~
joshschreuder
That's one hell of a tagline! Colour me intrigued.

~~~
recalibrator
Thanks for the kind words :)

------
abstrct
I have been working on a robot battle game that uses cryptocurrency
transactions as the main game action mechanic. We call the game Coindroids.

It is currently only available to play with Defcoin but it is pretty fun so
far. It's kind of like satoshi dice but with tactics/strategy instead of luck.

[https://def.coindroids.com](https://def.coindroids.com)

------
tekknolagi
I have been working on a small virtual machine called Carp. Right now I am
working on writing my own tokenizer (as opposed to relying upon strtok()) and
lexer, and then also a bytecode reader/writer.

[http://github.com/tekknolagi/carp](http://github.com/tekknolagi/carp)

------
yodaiken
Trying to help high school students learn about all the steps in higher
education with a nonprofit --
[http://www.realitystep.org](http://www.realitystep.org). We haven't launched
our main product yet but just conversations with students and teachers have
made it worth it so far.

------
nkoren
I quit my day job to work on
[http://www.podaris.com/](http://www.podaris.com/) full-time. (It's like
Google Docs for transport planning). It's going great -- in closed beta now.
Hoping to have a public release by the end of September, and turn it into a
real business!

~~~
endriju
When looking at your site, i realized how important the video is - it provides
comprehensive explanation, especially when considering the product complexity.
Anyway that's from June so I guess you've done a lot of progress since then.

~~~
nkoren
Too busy to cut another video, yes! Progress was somewhat interrupted by a
month-long road trip in America, but is still going strong.

------
anderspetersson
I built a marketplace for horseback riding tours [1]

Tried to get stable owners to sell their tours on the site, failed.

Probably closing it down soon if nothing magically happens.

[1] [https://www.rida.nu](https://www.rida.nu)

~~~
endriju
What I miss on the site is current offer of tours. Sometimes you have to "fake
it before you make it". If that doesn't work out you can always switch to
maintenance mode and come back to the project once you figure out what to do
next.

------
hashtag
Had an idea a few days ago. Spent the next couple days after that validating
and iterating through mockups on first build. Just literally started coding it
2 days ago. Haven't really gotten very far so can't say much but for now I'm
excited

------
andrewflnr
Fractal rendering and Perlin/simplex noise in Julia. Definitely worth it. I
learned a lot, since I basically had to write everything from the ground up
except the image handling. I couldn't say how long I spent on it.

------
motyar
I am a LAMP developer. I learned NodeJS, MongoDB, AngularJS, Bootstrap. Spoken
english.

I still have plan to learn PhoneGap, GruntJS and Jade ( and ? )

------
mnort9
Building [http://treble.io](http://treble.io), a community management tool for
twitter. Finally taking beta testers!

------
JoeAltmaier
Rewrote the media path in a product to have single-allocation zero-copy for
video frames. Avoids media node memory ballooning and saves CPU so more
clients per node.

------
lucasisola
Creating MVP for [http://molo.io](http://molo.io). Trying to launch in
Fall/Winter.

------
bsenftner
Adding automated lip sync and remote developer access to www.3d-avatar-
store.com.

------
zindlerb
A port of Bret Victors Drawing Dynamic Visualizations tool

~~~
alok-g
I would like to hear when you have something. Email is in my profile. Thanks.

------
tindrlabs
An app to help people keep track of their raised bed gardens.

