
The Great Code Club - cocoflunchy
http://www.greatcodeclub.com/
======
crazygringo
This seems cool, as far as I can tell it's more for one's personal education,
rather than producing something for others to use?

So I'm curious... is there any kind of "open-source incubator" out there?
Like, a site with 500 developers signed up, they all vote on new project
ideas, start a new project each month, kind of like a great big collaborative
hackathon, in order to put out some really impressive piece of software, that
then hopefully lives on?

E.g., an open-source iTunes integrated with bittorrent, complete with iPhone
app. A font-design program for amateurs. A keyframed animation tool that
outputs to HTML5 canvas. A dynamic texture generator program. A user-friendly
neural net trainer. A new lossy image compression format and encoder/decoder
designed for resolution independence instead of a fixed pixel grid. I don't
know, just cool projects that get people really excited.

I mean, the logistics of organizing such a thing would be a little crazy,
since not every type of project is amenable to a large number of developers
working in parallel, and you'd need a kind of domain expert and lead architect
on each one. But it would be so, so cool...

~~~
bitsweet
That's exactly what Assembly does
([https://assemblymade.com/ideas](https://assemblymade.com/ideas)). We enable
everyone to openly collaborate on real products and then share the upside.
Every month there is revenue Assembly transparently pays the bills and splits
the remaining proceeds with everyone that built the app.

disclosure: one of the founders of Assembly

~~~
mjmahone17
I've gone through the site, and am curious about your business model.
Essentially, you are creating co-op apps: how much of a cut of that app goes
to the assembly team? Is it 50%, with you taking control of selling the
app/making the business decisions? Or is the stake constantly changing (i.e. I
contributed early, but my share gets diluted as more people work on more tasks
to continue making revenue?), and you at some point want to sell the app?

~~~
bitsweet
Great questions - this FAQ page should hopefully answer all of them:
[https://assemblymade.com/help/profits](https://assemblymade.com/help/profits)

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asgard1024
Neat, but I would prefer something similar to Alcoholics Anonymous. A self-
support group for people who already have personal projects, want to work on
them, but are either lazy or procrastinating or paralyzed by analysis.

Although I would probably not pay money for either.

~~~
plaguuuuuu
IMO ... a psychiatrist. If you really have that much trouble starting a
personal project then you either need to fix yourself or have someone help you
fix yourself.

sorry for bluntness, haven't had enough coffee or sleep.

~~~
yuubi
Well, yes, that's what support groups are. Not all problems require drugs (the
psychiatrist's USP is the ability to write prescriptions).

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macournoyer
I'm the creator of the club. Happy to answer any questions about this. I'm
just getting started with this so feedback is very much appreciated :)

~~~
protl
So I get to pay you $30/m to work for you on projects and I get to talk to the
other developers you have locked up in your forum and to listen to you do a
screencast of unverifiable quality. Sounds amazing, sign me up!

~~~
plaguuuuuu
wait, it _costs_ money? lol.

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evv
Are you trying to find people who are learning to code, or recruit experienced
developers?

Falling into the latter group, I don't see any reason to pay $30/mo for an
online community which already takes my time.

~~~
macournoyer
It's for experienced developers who want to code on cool projects on the side.

I will be producing screencasts, articles and supporting ppl in the club. I
think there's a value to this. Teaching other developers online is what I do
for a living.

~~~
ipedrazas
I'm not sure I'm getting it... you want people to pay to work on cool
projects? like the ticket to a cool bar or something like that?

~~~
kotakota
I don't really get it either. As an experienced developer if I want to work on
a cool project I either start my own or I go on github and contribute to
something I'm interested in. While the creator claims to be recruiting
experienced developer's I don't see why any good developer would pay a monthly
fee to work on a side project. This seems like it would attract more amateur
or novice programmers who aren't comfortable contributing to a large mature
project on github.

~~~
shakingarrow
I agree, but i find this suitable for me. because whenever i try to contribute
to a project on github, i spend an awful lot of time in browsing all the
projects in my language of choice and end up not contributing to any of them.
If there are less choices involved, its better, and since he is curating the
content, it would involve less of those hassles.

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sdegutis
A little off-topic, but it makes me a little sad that the exemplar
my_great_project it mentions is in JavaScript.

It's not because of the language itself. It's because it's implied that the
platform my_great_project would be built on is "Chrome, the new C runtime".
This is the "platform of the future" and that makes me kinda sad.

EDIT: clarified

~~~
macournoyer
I guess it's safe to say that most web dev know JavaScript.

That's why I chose to use it as an example and will also use it to present
projects in the club.

~~~
m0a0t0
So is it just for web devs then?

~~~
macournoyer
Not at all. But I'm assuming some knowledge of web development.

For example, one project will be to code an HTML5 game, but you can choose to
implement it in C or Java. You'll need to be able to understand
JavaScript/HTML to learn from the screencasts that will present the project
since I will be using JS and HTML5 canvas.

That's just an example, another project idea I have atm is implementing
language or compiler.

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CGamesPlay
Is this more of a curated program where I am assigned a project to work on and
given support towards doing so, or is this a community where people come in
with projects and the community works collaboratively towards supporting these
projects?

Is it a club or a school?

~~~
macournoyer
It will start as a curated program. But my hope is to make it evolve to be
both. A place to get knowledge, inspiration and motivation. And then a place
to get help and support making your own thing when you're ready.

~~~
jitl
I think then that the name is a little disingenuous. "Club" connotes a
community, but not a directed program of study with a supervising teacher. The
first half of the website, everything up until "Learning for all types of
learners," describes an awesome community idea. Your product screenshot is a
re-skinned Discourse forum.

But you swerve into this sort-of class format so we can "build our resumes" to
be like Twitter employees, and you're looking for $30/mo for it? This seems
like less collaborative community, and more a carefully branded training
course from [http://classes.codedinc.com/](http://classes.codedinc.com/).

~~~
macournoyer
Not at all what I had in mind. I want this to be a community and not a course.

But to get there we have to start somewhere. And I know people can bond and
form a community better if they work on similar problems, thus the projects.

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k-mcgrady
Nice idea. I don't have the time to do this right now as I'm already working
on a few side projects but I'll definitely be checking back in a few months.
Not too sure $30 is the right price. $20/25 feels better to me (small
difference I know but $30 just 'feels' a little high).

~~~
redguava
I wonder how much that is just
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring).

If it was set at $20... would $10/$15 have felt right?

~~~
k-mcgrady
Good point. I also think it's slightly psychological as I'd be more likely to
pay if it was $29.

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shawndrost
I know Marc-André and can vouch for the quality of his instruction and his
creative, effective class formats. This is a very cheap way to learn a lot
from him, and I highly recommend it.

(I teach software engineering for a living.)

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githulhu
Blocked by WebSense at my work. "Potentially Damaging Content." :(

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coenhyde
I never have any problems starting something new. I have problems finishing
what I start. When I start a new project I do the hard parts first for a proof
of concept. Except now that I know it can be done I loose interest...

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jonhmchan
Nice resource - just applied

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wil421
This looks really great. I have enough knowledge from school and online
courses that I really dont need to take another curated tutorial.

We havent started development on my main project at work and I am itching to
use my new skills. Recently I have been looking for something to collaborate
on with more experienced devs but havent found an outlet. This looks like
something I was looking for.

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mholt
Cool idea.

And if you're gonna blur an image, blur the image. :)

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ricankng787
Just applied, very excited to see how this works.

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redguava
@macournoyer, reading the comments here, it sounds like your value proposition
isn't articulated clearly enough. There's a bunch of mentions of the price and
not knowing what they are getting.

In your comments here, you mention the importance of your instruction and
teaching, which I think is great. Perhaps make that clearer on the website?

Looks like a good idea to me.

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ssully
I really appreciate this idea and have signed up, but the $30 monthly tag
seems a bit much with the amount of information given.

This could really benefit from a trial period, or maybe a demo project. A demo
project would be neat; have it offer everything the other monthly projects
will so people know exactly what they are getting into.

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codezero
I'm curious why this even mentions that no credit card is required to apply.
Is it required later? Why mention it at all if it's not?

Also, I use Ghostery and it blocks Google Analytics which seems to
consequently block the click-through on your Apply button.

~~~
jmduke
Notice the last checkbox in the application form:

 _I 'm willing to commit $30/mo to become a better developer._

~~~
codezero
Gotcha, I couldn't get to the next page because of Ghostery.

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Baadier_Sydow
Any idea when it will be launching and do you have plans to limit the size of
the community?

~~~
macournoyer
It should be launching next week or the next week after that at the latest.

Yes, I will limit the size of the community. The goal is to get a core group
of very passionate people first.

~~~
Baadier_Sydow
I probably should have made my motivation a bit longer ;)

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rgj
So.... Your forum is meta.discourse.org with a photoshopped logo and a blur?

~~~
allochthon
Seems like a great use of Discourse.

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Jack5500
It would be nice to receive a confirmation mail. I'm quite sure if my
application got to you now :)

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ivanbrussik
This seems like a nifty idea. I have definitely been plagued with coders block
in the past.

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naturalethic
Buyer beware

~~~
midas007
Yeah, something about the look or copy comes off as a free site but then it
isn't.

