

Ask HN: Review my site - devcheatsheet.com - tim_church
http://devcheatsheet.com

======
johns
You have a couple of cheat sheets of mine in your directory, which I
appreciate. However, you directly link to the PDFs. It would be nice if you
included a link to my site that lists the sheets I've made. Maybe on the
source page for my name?

~~~
tim_church
No problem. There is currently a link to your blog from the source page. Would
you like me to change this link to your cheat sheet list? Or are you talking
about a separate link?

In general, I try to avoid direct links to PDFs except when it is unavoidable
or confusing for the user. If there were separate landing pages for each cheat
sheet, I could remove the direct PDF link and link to those instead.

~~~
johns
Oh I didn't realize my name was linked to my blog. That works for me!

------
raju
I like it. Clean layout, easy to find what I was looking for (even searched
for Clojure).

But is this merely an aggregation of cheat-sheets off of the web? Is there any
review process involved before a cheat-sheet shows up on your list? I guess
what I am getting at is how is this different from me just searching google
for "emacs cheatsheets"?

~~~
tim_church
Yes, this is a cheatsheet aggregator/directory from cheatsheets around the
web. Each cheatsheet is manually reviewed to make sure that it is useful and
relevant. I think it is important to maintain a high quality level in the
directory or else it defeats the purpose. In the future, I hope to add sorting
by popularity to make it even easier to find the top results.

So why is this different than a google search? Well, in my experience, Google
does not return the best results for cheatsheets. This may be partially due to
the fact that many are downloads in PDF or other formats, so the relevant
content may not help with SEO ranking. Another advantage is that
devcheatsheet.com provides a preview before you click through and download.
Finally, it is also easier to navigate between related topics such as
Javascript and JQuery.

~~~
sjs
Great job, thank you for sharing this resource with us.

Please add this cheat sheet for Xcode:
[http://cocoasamurai.blogspot.com/2009/08/xcode-shortcuts-
upd...](http://cocoasamurai.blogspot.com/2009/08/xcode-shortcuts-updated-for-
xcode-32-on.html)

It's not mine but I have found it useful.

~~~
tim_church
Thanks for the suggestion. I will add it to the directory now.

------
joshfinnie
I loved your site when I first saw it... So much I submitted it myself:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1052937>

~~~
tim_church
Thanks! Not sure how I missed this one...

------
AdamN
There seems to be no understanding of 'version' by the search algorithm. For
instance with Python:

<http://devcheatsheet.com/tag/python/>

Version 2.4 is near the top. Even if that was the most popular cheat sheet,
there should be some way to have references for newer versions at the top. I
know it's a tough problem that Google hasn't cracked even, but it would be
nice to have addressed even with a workaround like a version keyword for each
cheat sheet and then a list of versions on the right side.

~~~
tim_church
I agree that there needs to be a way to easily distinguish between versions. I
am planning to add version keywords but haven't gotten to it yet. Also, I hope
to add more sorting options too, such as date created, which might also help.

------
rudle
Some user voting might be nice. This would likely create a canonical cheat
sheet for each section.

For instance, here <http://devcheatsheet.com/tag/ruby/> the first cheat sheet
isn't even ruby specific, and I think this is a lose.

Otherwise, a great site I'll likely be using it in the future.

~~~
tim_church
I agree. My next big task is figuring out the best way to rank the most
relevant results for each tag. I am looking into several options including
voting and an aggregation of other popularity factors (# clicks, # bookmarks
on delicious, # links, etc).

------
stse
If you are looking to evolve the site here are some suggestions: Create an
online editor in javascript or flash that lets your users create and edit
cheat sheets online. Leverage a CC license so your users can print and spread
the created cheat sheets (free advertising). Sell prints (photos), mousepads,
booklets etc. While offering free products or a monetary reward to the authors
(threadless style). Also let the author give their reward to a related
organization (like the python software foundation for a python cheat sheet).
Keep user participation high and the site organized with tagging and ranking
features.

~~~
evandavid
There is no need to offer authors money. You just need to formulate something
clever around reputation/kudos.

~~~
stse
Yes, money is just type of incentive. You want to experiment and measure what
works best, maybe even let authors choose what they want.

------
DanHulton
Goddamn that's slick. That goes straight in my bookmarks.

Any chance you could get an XNA section?

~~~
tim_church
Sure. Any particular XNA cheatsheets you can suggest?

~~~
DanHulton
Sadly, no. I was hoping to use this tool to track some down.

------
lpolovets
Great implementation!

Most of your visitors will be coming because they want to learn a language
from a cheat sheet or have a quick reference. This seems like a great target
audience for Amazon links. If you had 2-3 books you recommended in the right
sidebar for each category, I think that might fare better than Google Ads.
Could be worth A/B testing.

~~~
tim_church
The Google Ads are just a placeholder. I think Amazon books would be very
relevant, and I am going to look into some other affiliate programs such as
thinkgeek.com.

------
Vindexus
Like it. There's a lot of content and it's well organized.

It would be nice if there was more information on each cheat sheet before I
clicked it. Maybe a list of things that are in it (Class Functions, String
Functions, Regex Expressions for example). Or add more tags to each
cheatsheet.

Keep up the good work.

~~~
tim_church
Thanks for the input, Vindexus. I have considered adding a short description
to each cheatsheet, and I intend on adding additional tags as well. However, I
am trying to be cautious and maintain the clean look without overwhelming the
user with information. It is always a balancing act.

~~~
Vindexus
Of course, that makes sense. How about a "Preview" link that uses Lightbox or
Fancybox to bring up a cropped screenshot of the cheatsheet? Just so I can get
a look at some possible things they'll cover and the format of it. Not a huge
deal, and probably a bit of work just to get the sceenshots.

------
evandavid
I like it. Though I feel that some of these guides don't really qualify as
cheat sheets. I consider a cheat sheet to be a quick reference with helpful
commands, syntax, examples etc. Some of these documents are just condensed
howto guides. For instance, most of the SEO ones. Something to think about
anyway.

------
walkon
Nice site. Have you considered incorporating any interaction with the site,
such as a way to rate the cheat sheets or give comments? Also, it (might) be
cool if there was the ability to create user/community driven cheat sheets
that could be modified wiki-style or something.

------
bajsejohannes
Good job on making a nice and clean design! One thing I found slightly
confusing was that some images of cheatsheets links to an intermediate page,
instead of the cheatsheet itself.

Examples:

ANSI C Reference Card v2.2 on <http://devcheatsheet.com/tag/c/>

STL Quick Reference on <http://devcheatsheet.com/tag/cpp/>

I'm gussing it is because these have different formats. One suggestion would
be to pick one of them (e.g. PDF) for the image, and create links on the
different formats (e.g. "Formats: DVI, PDF, TeX") for alternative formats.

~~~
tim_church
I can see how that could be confusing. Linking directly from the list of
formats might work. I'll look into it. Thanks.

------
dzlobin
Any chance of getting a MongoDB cheat sheet?

~~~
tim_church
I'll start looking for some MongoDB cheat sheets. If you know of any, feel
free to suggest them.

~~~
dzlobin
I've been searching far and wide. I'm working with a mongoDB and Ruby app
right now, we may write one in the process

------
tezza
Hi there Tim Church. Nice clean site.

It looks like this is a well-named niche bookmark browsing site. I looked for
more detailed About, but could only find the rather terse text mentioned at
the bottom of each page. Do you personally do the maintenance and curation?

I don't mind at all if you (Tim Church) do it, its just important to know whos
opinion forms the content and how well any broken links or tech advances will
be catered for.

Good work BTW, no matter who has the keys to Djangos Admin Interface!

~~~
tim_church
Yes, I personally run the whole site from design to development to content. I
am still in the process of adding features and more cheatsheets.

------
Adrenalist
Very useful, but the :: separators are distracting. I think that most first-
time visitors are looking to scan your collection for a particular technology
(that's what I did).

This view [<http://devcheatsheet.com/?view=tag>] is more readable. How about
using the 'tag' view layout, but add categories to make browsing easier.

Another suggestion: add 3 or 4 'similar cheat sheets' to each cheat sheet to
facilitate browsing and reduce bounce rates.

------
Maro
What I'd like is being able to type in a big search textbox sth like:

"java try catch syntax"

and it would automatically (without me hitting enter) fetch the sample code
and display it in a nice syntax-highlighted manner. It should also offer auto-
completion like Google (eg. after I typed "java try"...).

Or:

"php class syntax" "svn ignore files" "diff show side by side" "c++ template
function" etc.

It'd be a lot of work but it seems doable and it'd be a killer destination
site for programmers.

~~~
tim_church
That does sound like a great idea, but it is a little beyond the scope of this
site.

------
chrislo
Have you seen the Ruby "cheat" gem?

<http://cheat.errtheblog.com/>

It outputs cheat sheets to the command line, and allows people to edit them
through a wiki. Might be a good source of cheat sheets for your site?

Also a command line tool to pull in cheat sheets from your site would be
useful, although automatically converting them to ascii might be tricky.

------
richcollins
You could do some work to make the directory easier to read. Some inspiration:
<http://www.net-a-porter.com/Shop/AZDesigners>
[http://www.iolanguage.com/scm/git/checkout/Io/docs/IoReferen...](http://www.iolanguage.com/scm/git/checkout/Io/docs/IoReference.html)

~~~
tim_church
Thanks for the input. The examples you mentioned are more similar to the tags
view (<http://devcheatsheet.com/?view=tag>), which is not currently the
default.

------
hariis
Good job pulling together all these cheatsheets and a nice site too!

Next step would be for something like a cheat sheet wiki where the information
has a clear time stamp and has the possibility of being kept accurate.

This is a problem with these pdf cheat sheets.

~~~
tim_church
I agree that can be a problem with the outdated cheatsheets. The wiki could be
an interesting idea. Thanks.

------
yannis
This is an excellent resource and done very professionally. I like the clean
site look and nothing is more than two clicks away. Surely it will be a winner
with developers.

Let us know when your new year's resolution traffic is on target! Nice blog
too:)

~~~
tim_church
Thanks yannis! If all the HN'ers boomark the site then that should be a good
start on my traffic target :)

------
jackfoxy
Within minutes of discovering this on HN I needed a cheatsheet for RoboCopy.
Didn't find one on your site. For what it's worth here's a pretty good one I
dug up <http://ss64.com/nt/robocopy.html>

~~~
tim_church
Thanks. I will add it now.

------
thinkbohemian
This is really convenient, very well done. Is there any way we could network a
text editor such as TextMate, to pull context help depending on the
file/language you're currently using? So you press F1 and it would send you to
the appropriate PDF...?

------
rufugee
I'd like to see the date the actual cheatsheet was created...not just added to
the site. A javascript cheatsheet from 2001 is likely to be much different
than one from 2007. Other than that I love the site!

~~~
tim_church
Adding the date created is on my todo list. This information might not be
available for every one, but it would be useful for the ones that do have it.

~~~
nik61
Some of the Javascript material is very old, and refers to Netscape as a going
concern. Sometimes old is interesting but perhaps there could be some markers
to warn people.

------
Sukotto
[http://www.viemu.com/a_vi_vim_graphical_cheat_sheet_tutorial...](http://www.viemu.com/a_vi_vim_graphical_cheat_sheet_tutorial.html)

Is in the "vi" section but not the "Vim" one.

~~~
tim_church
Fixed. Thanks for pointing that out.

------
davidw
(Nitpick: It's Tcl, not TCL)

~~~
tim_church
Fixed. Thanks for pointing that out. (might take a few minutes to update due
to caching)

------
Skriticos
Any chance for a QT entry in the Libraries & Frameworks section? That's
defiantly a framework worth noting, but I'm not sure how much cheatsheets are
out there for it. They are kind of hard to find.

~~~
tim_church
Sure. I will look into QT cheatsheets to add. Any suggestions?

------
icey
I switch languages a lot in the course of a week, this will be very useful to
me.

It seems really well polished - I like the look, and I was able to find
everything I wanted to find. Well done!

~~~
tim_church
Thanks for the encouragement!

------
zokier
Seems that you are currently hotlinking the cheatsheets from other sites. imho
it would be nicer to host the files yourself, to prevent link rot and to not
"steal" other peoples bandwidth.

~~~
tim_church
Whenever possible I try to link to a download page instead of directly to a
PDF or image file. However, in some cases I do hotlink directly to a file
download. One advantage of this is that if the author updates the file (to fix
an error) the user downloads the newest version.

What do other HN'ers think? Should I host the PDF files directly? What is the
proper netiquette in this case?

~~~
nollidge
Maybe you could do it Google-style, where you feature the hotlink but also
offer a cached version of it. Or, alternatively, you can hotlink to _Google's_
cache of it (since they almost certainly have one!).

------
tim_church
Thank you HN! I really appreciate all of the positive feedback and creative
suggestions. Your comments have given me lots of ideas and the encouragement
to keep improving the site.

------
fakir
You should add a button that says "Report broken link". For example the My
UNIX cheatsheet under ssh is broken. What do you think?

~~~
tim_church
I think it is a good idea to enable users to give some feedback. I will look
into ways to report broken links. Thanks for pointing that out.

------
CWuestefeld
Nice, it's bookmarked now. Good organization, looks pretty complete.

(Why are so many cheat sheets needed for SQL injection?)

------
trusko
Very handy, good job! Bookmarked. Thanks.

------
goodgoblin
I like your site. However, I did a search on 'transactions' and it came up
with nothing. Cool idea though.

------
Concours
excellent work, just bookmarked it. The only thing I'll recommend you is to
improve that adsense there or look for a new revenue model, you won't earn
much from it at the place it is, maybe sell ebooks later: kind of the
"devcheatsheet book".

------
jorisvoorn
Nice, clean & beautiful design, so the overview great :)

Already bookmarked!

------
prabodh
Simple Interface..

Some of the links to stanford seems to be broken..

~~~
tim_church
Thanks for letting me know. It might be good to add a way to report broken
links through the site.

------
johndoe77
Excellent work. I'm telling all my friends about this great resource.

------
alttab
Very cool Tim!

I will be using this for a ruby reference for sure.

------
lpgauth
Funny, I read "Life Cheat Sheet" instead of "Lift Cheat Sheet".

------
olalonde
Nice collection ! Community moderation/features would be nice.

~~~
tim_church
I've debated adding community features like voting or comments on the
cheatsheets, but I haven't decided yet. I may experiment with some of these
features in the future.

There is currently the option for anyone to suggest a cheatsheet that is not
currently in the directory. (So if anyone sees a missing cheatsheet, let me
know!)

------
fuzzythinker
Browsers would be nice. Best organization I've seen!

------
rasikjain
Very clean UI. Like the collection of cheatsheets.

------
chewbranca
Very nice! Already useful for me, thanks!

------
etherael
Awww, no Groovy?

~~~
tim_church
I'm happy to add it. Do you know of any good Groovy cheatsheets?

~~~
etherael
the dzone refcardz has been the best I've found thus far.

------
lionshare
great. bookmarked.

