Weekend Hack Fest 2010 :: The Next big thing!

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jaoudestudios
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Weekend Hack Fest 2010 :: The Next big thing!

Post by jaoudestudios »

Reading about Yahoo's 24 hour Hack Fest May 2009 in London got me thinking. Why not arrange our own Hack Fest well in advance so all interested Developers can take part? Nothing too crazy, just a Friday night until Sunday night - with a bit of sleep and food in between of course. The schedule would be simple; start off easy Friday night with the planning of what we are going to develop and build with details of who is doing which part; then Saturday morning let the hacking begin. In this short space of time a small project is definitely achievable with a launch on Sunday night of the project's phase. If the Open Source project gets popular, future phases and/or weekend hack fests could be arranged accordingly - you never know the next Twitter could be mashed together.

You may be thinking: who can take part? Am I skilled enough? All good and important questions. To take part you would not have to be an expert in PHP, Ruby, Rails, Zend Framework, MySQL, CSS, xhtml, jQuery, Javascript, OO/OOP...the list can go on. However, passion and dedication is a definite requirement! This can be a good place for you to learn and become an expert - maybe not overnight, but definitely on the fast track to becoming one.

My blog article with some comments already, feel free to add accordinly
http://www.jaoudestudios.com/blog/details/id/8

Resource: Linux Format Magazine August 09, p14
jack_indigo
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Re: Weekend Hack Fest 2010 :: The Next big thing!

Post by jack_indigo »

Not to be the pessimist, but wouldn't all the time be spent arguing:

- Whether to go with a mashup or come up with something new
- Ruby? Really? And you posted this here?
- Which Javascript platform to use -- jQuery, Prototype, MooTools, a hybrid of these, etc.
- Which MVC framework to use
- Whether to use Drupal or not, instead of MVC, using "Drupal as MVC" (a trend I saw with some devs, actually)
- Whether to use Apache, FastCGI, Cherokee or some other web server
- Which URL routes look the best
- Which design pattern to use for certain parts
- Whether to make it a downloadable, a SaaS hosted app, or both
- Whether it uses a proprietary license or a F/OSS one, or whether it is hybrid depending on who pays
- Whether it uses a canned XHTML/CSS template or a custom one
- What the variable and function naming convention would be
- Whether starting curly braces would start a new line or not
- Which check-in product would be used -- CVS, SVN, git, etc.
- How many lines before a comment would be necessary, and how many comment lines per comment
- Whether every function (or class method) or property block or class would require comments on purpose and input/output params
- What the nesting level allowance would be
- If it became popular, what the cash distribution would be
- Who would centrally control it and ensure cash profit from it would be distributed properly
- Who would decide where the thing is hosted and whether it is necessary to grow it on a larger server after time passes, etc.
- Who would pay expenses consumed by the site for hosting, bandwidth, etc.
- Whether to use VPS hosting, shared hosting, dedicated hosting, a hybrid of those, or cloud computing
- How many servers to use in the solution -- such as a web farm of VPSes, or a big honking dedicated server
- What Linux OS to use in the hosting plan
- What database -- MySQL or PostgreSQL -- to use
- If it's for sale, which shopping cart to use and which payment processor
- Which lawyer to use
- Which country to base it
- What the entrance and exit requirements are for team members, annual fees, number of meetings, etc.
- Who the policy compliance officer would be and the procedure for dealing with non-compliance
- What project management methodology is used
- Whether to go with 2 column, 3 column, centered, elastic in the XHTML/CSS
- Whether to stuff all the CSS into one file via platform hacks only where necessary, or separate the CSS with one central CSS and then platform deviations where necessary, and whether to use --only for IE-- conditional comments instead of platform hacks
- What project tracking system is used

Of course, some of this is slight tongue-in-cheek, but you get the point.
matthijs
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Re: Weekend Hack Fest 2010 :: The Next big thing!

Post by matthijs »

you could have coded half the app in the time you wrote that list :)
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jaoudestudios
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Re: Weekend Hack Fest 2010 :: The Next big thing!

Post by jaoudestudios »

matthijs wrote:you could have coded half the app in the time you wrote that list :)
Haha :D

All joking aside jack_indigo does have some good points others are a bit far fetched for the moment - some I have not consider but others I have.

I was going to be open to most suggestions and see what the majority prefer. However, i would prefer Zend Framework for MVC, jQuery only for javascript, Apache, SVN repo (I already have so I would let everyone use that), I also have a couple of dedicated servers, so if we were to launch something then they could be used as I have ample resources (CentOS 5.3). If the project made money and got so big require more then I guess we will cross that bridge when we come to it - no point worrying about it just yet. I know you covered more, but those were the parts that stood out.

BTW: Why so defensive when I mention Ruby? Is it because it is better? :P Recently I have started reading Ruby on Rails books and its a hell of a lot better than PHP and Zend Framework. Dont get me wrong I still love PHP and ZF; may be because I have been using them for so long, well PHP anyway. One day I might bite the bullet and switch, but unfortunately that day is not here yet nor in the foreseeable future, so I will continue with PHP :wink:
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