It's hard to know exactly what you mean by "simple", but I'm fairly sure you want to avoid any frameworks, as those tend to have a learning curve, even for the easiest ones. Same goes for build tools like Webpack, which I still have trouble with after years of use.
For CSS I see a lot of recommendations for "classless" libraries, which I've never tried, but could be good if you don't need to do much tinkering. For just a little bit more time investment you can get a lot more options with something like Bootstrap. It's pretty easy to learn, has a lot of "drag and drop" style components, and there are tons of templates out there (free and premium). I learned it once many years ago and have been using it for projects ever since.
On the interactivity side it really depends on what your needs are, but if you don't need too many bells and whistles you could probably get by with vanilla Javascript. jQuery is also a good choice for simple applications, as it offers a slightly more intuitive interface to some of the basic JS actions.
All of this being said, if you think you will be spending a lot of time on the frontend, or have complex interactivity needs, it might be worth it to learn a framework. I can recommend Vue as one that is fairly easy to get started with and also scalable to larger applications.
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Lexia Learning is the structured literacy expert. For over 35 years, the company has focused solely on literacy, and today, provides a full spectrum of solutions for both students and teachers. With robust offerings for differentiated instruction, personalized learning, assessment, and professional learning, Lexia helps more learners read, write, and speak with confidence.
Lexia is an amazing place to work, not only because of the great benefits, but because the work you do plays a key role in helping millions of students learn to read and write.
Lexia Learning is the structured literacy expert. For over 35 years, the company has focused solely on literacy, and today, provides a full spectrum of solutions for both students and teachers. With robust offerings for differentiated instruction, personalized learning, assessment, and professional learning, Lexia helps more learners read, write, and speak with confidence.
Lexia is an amazing place to work, not only because of the great benefits, but because the work you do plays a key role in helping millions of students learn to read and write.
Help me understand the appeal of NFT art. I love digital art, but I don't see the appeal of spending money to get the token certifying you as the owner. The image/work is still out there and can be viewed/downloaded by other people. You don't even control it, unless the artist agrees to send you all of the files and delete them on his or her system. Your name doesn't even appear next to the piece when people look at it.
Sure, usually the tokens come with a print, and you support the artist, but those are things you can do via other means. What is the NFT adding? It seems only slightly more authentic than "buying" a star from a star registry.
NFT art seems like the dumbest/faddiest/scammiest idea to come out of the crypto sure yet, and not just because the art market is super faddy and maybe scammy already.
I know artists that think this is going to be their ticket. But it was never the lack of crypto that kept them from making money. It was the lack of any consumer value to their art.
There are two ways to make money as an artist: you either make a few, huge pieces that sell to very rich people (making your yearly bank on one or two pieces), or you make a huge number of easily reproduceable pieces that sell to the general populace. The difficulty in both is not the creation of the pieces. It's the marketing and sales pipeline. Both rely on selling a purchaser a narrative on what the art will mean to them. Exclusivity in the former, worldliness in the latter.
If you can't crack that marketing problem, you're going to ask equally zero pieces as NFT than as any other medium. And if you can crack that marketing problem, selling it as NFT does nothing for you as the artist.
Why do people buy originals rather than prints, often at a 10x markup? Why do they get certified dog breeds rather than mutts from the animal shelter? Why do people pay for skins and unique items in video games? Why will people spend $300K on a college degree when the coursework itself is available for free on the Internet?
A lot of times, people just want a limited-supply token from a third-party saying "yes, I paid for this, and that distinguishes me from the hoi polloi who got it for free".
NFTs are not easy to understand, but sit within the intersection of these two questions:
1. What is the value of art?
2. What is the value of money?
When we look for analogues, they're of the industrial era, things about intellectual property, branding, merchandise etc. This is a way of directly speculating on an idea. Is it a good idea? If so, then other people will want it, right? Then, the token must have value. There are no gatekeepers or enforcers to say otherwise.
Yes, and still is attempting. He and his climbing partner used the weather window to make another acclimatization rotation up to camp 2. I believe they are at base camp now.
Question for everyone on this thread who went from being (1) a regular caffeine user to (2) completely or mostly abstinent: did you find that you were as or even more mentally productive after you had transitioned off of it?
Similarly, is there anyone who has gone from not using caffeine much (or at all), to using it all the time, and found it to be a positive and sustainable improvement on productivity?
Currently I drink green tea 3-4 days a week and find that its a good balance between getting the benefits while also not building up a huge tolerance.
I spent a few years completely avoiding caffeine and the last few years consuming a lot of caffeine (via coffee). For me, in terms of alertness or productivity, there is a difference only in the "transition" period when the body is readjusting to the (lack of) caffeine. Otherwise the only difference is that by being used to caffeine, I can enjoy making and drinking good coffee (one of the simple pleasures of life).
This is what it is for me. I've quit coffee and caffeine multiple times, sometimes for a year usually just for a month or two. Just to see if I enjoy life more without it. But I just simply love the routine of coffee in the morning. Also I've found nothing that compares to the flavor of black coffee. I only drink coffee in the morning, but several cups (french press). One of the simple pleasures in life for me as well.
for reference: I regularly took 200mg or more a day through diet coke. Quit a little over a year ago with 20mg caffeine pills for about a week or two. Had headaches the entire two weeks. I had a total tolerance to caffeine at this point. I could drink an entire can right before bed and sleep absolutely fine.
I think my productivity increased, but really it was just removing the "brain fog" of feeling like I had to ingest more caffeine that boosted my productivity.
Things that changed for me:
* no more "I forgot to drink caffeine/didn't have access, now I have withdrawl".
* my hangovers after drinking alcohol are more tolerable or gone.
* no more compulsive soda drinking when bored
Things that didn't change for me:
* sleep
* energy
* overall mood
* weight
* caffeine still has no (or imperceptible) impact on me when I drink small amounts from tea. Most months I go with 0mg.
I think many people ascribe quitting coffee, soda, or caffeine to many of the things that didn't impact me, but those same people also note other life changes they did at the same time and I suspect that had a greater impact for them.
That said, I replaced my caffine habit with seltzer/sparkling water (which helps trick me into thinking it is a soda). I now drink large amounts of seltzer instead.
Every time I see a diet coke? Anxiety spikes, I have to strongly resist the urge to drink it. Caffeine addiction was pretty terrible for me.
I found switching to sparkling water (we bought a Soda Stream) helped me here. Now I get a real soda maybe once every week or two as a "treat" (basically the now rare occasion we order takeout) and can resist them when in an office (rarely these days) with a vending machine.
> did you find that you were as or even more mentally productive after you had transitioned off of it?
Being perfectly honest, this is _very_ hard to judge. I would say it's about the same, but it somehow feels a bit more... honest, shall I say? The feedback loop for being extremely tired and course correcting is much shorter. As opposed to just varying your caffeine dose for a week or so, and then realising you're super tired, now you will find out about it within a day or so. One big upside for me has been that if I now have a cup of coffee, it actually works like it was meant to, and I'm far more energetic for a short while. This can be used strategically for rare, but important events. In the past, this would have required large amounts of caffeine over an already high baseline.
Caffeine just made me act like a coke-head. Remember, cocaine's effects are very similar to caffeine.
I also used to get bad insomnia from caffeine.
That's why I switched to decaf in the morning.
As far as a productivity shift... That's hard to quantify. It's easy to get under the influence of a dopamine boost and fool yourself into thinking you're more productive; when you're really making more mistakes and driving your colleagues nuts.
I definitely did. I was almost embarrassed by how alert I felt during the day after I quit, because I felt like I'd wasted so many years feeling drowsy and brain foggy.
If it had mostly been down to the caffeine I bet I'd wasted literally years of scratching my head and staring blankly at the screen.
When you describe it as a "Rotten Tomatoes" style platform, I think of only having a handful of trusted people/experts giving reviews for items (IE established movie critics). It looks like anyone can leave feedback on an item, which is a little different. RT started as (and still is) just an aggregator of movie critics, not a community review site.
As others have pointed out, once you gain traction, fake reviews are going to be a big problem. It seems like the solution to that is moving towards a more "Rotten Tomatoes" style system, where only the established experts give feedback. This might start as having two ratings - "experts" and "community", but I expect you would quickly find the "expert" rating to be much more useful to people.
This is a cool idea, but I'm worried (like a lot of other commenters) that a "rapid fire" approach like this may not work, and could get you banned from a lot of communities. As a developer I need help with marketing, but I also don't want to spam a bunch of communities (especially ones I use, like HN).
I would definitely put more information about (1) The messaging you are using, (2) who you post as (do you post as the owner?), and (3) the directories you submit to (it looks like all 160, but further comments seem to indicate that it's a subset).
I wonder if it would be more valuable to find a good messaging formula for a few specific communities, and post things that way? I would be much more interested in a service that not only posts, but also follows comment threads and answers questions. Thats probably a more premium offering, but worth considering.
HackerNews is listed as one of the directories. When I submitted my project (soon to be startup) I got a ton of support and advice, it was invaluable. That being said, I don't think it would have worked if I hadn't made a very personalized message and responded to all the comments.
Exactly, if you can't be bothered to submit it yourself and chat with potential users, or even just other makers providing feedback, then you probably won't succeed.
uigradients is really nice, although they only have linear gradients (which look really good). I created Gradient Magic to highlight the large variety of styles and patterns that are possible.
As far as an API goes, how would you organize the input/output for dynamic backgrounds? Maybe send a style and colors, and get a random gradient of that color?
For CSS I see a lot of recommendations for "classless" libraries, which I've never tried, but could be good if you don't need to do much tinkering. For just a little bit more time investment you can get a lot more options with something like Bootstrap. It's pretty easy to learn, has a lot of "drag and drop" style components, and there are tons of templates out there (free and premium). I learned it once many years ago and have been using it for projects ever since.
On the interactivity side it really depends on what your needs are, but if you don't need too many bells and whistles you could probably get by with vanilla Javascript. jQuery is also a good choice for simple applications, as it offers a slightly more intuitive interface to some of the basic JS actions.
All of this being said, if you think you will be spending a lot of time on the frontend, or have complex interactivity needs, it might be worth it to learn a framework. I can recommend Vue as one that is fairly easy to get started with and also scalable to larger applications.