isaaclyman

Edward is a webapp for writing novels. I built and launched it over the last six months as a side project. The app was made with Vue, Node, and PostgreSQL. There's an unlimited-time free trial, so give it a look and let me know if you have any feedback.

This reminded me, I keep wondering why the tamarind fruit has been left out of Western cuisine. You find trace amounts in Worcestershire sauce and the occasional Indian dish and you can get tamarind juice/candy at some Mexican places if you know what to look for, but by and large it's unheard of and unobtainable. Pity, too, it's got such a nice texture and flavor when prepared correctly.

I know tamarind trees aren't native to the Western hemisphere, but that hasn't ever stopped us before.

Huh.

This is harsh, but true. I've never heard a successful founder say "I don't know, I just wanted to start a company with my friends and get rich." Every dang middle-schooler in the US wants that. Companies are a means, not an end. Successful ones always start with someone who's passionate about a very specific problem.

This really comes out in corporate mission statements. Even if you're Xerox, your mission statement is something like "Improve the rate of business communications by creating the world's most excellent copy machines."

If you don't have an idea for a startup, you're missing the key ingredient. The team literally cannot exist without that visionary person who knows exactly what they're after.

Impressive. What area/industry are you in that you can find accommodations like this?

Around here anything above 15 is a lot.

It's a Utah company called DirectScale. The company is really great, but some circumstances surrounding the product and work environment were making me feel really unproductive. Which might not be a big deal for everyone, but it was for me. I rode it out for a few months, lobbied for some changes, and eventually decided it was time to move on.

That is not always the case. My last job had unlimited PTO and some of us took 20+ days per year.

I left a startup job recently. They did a stellar job handling it. They spent a day or so making offers to get me to stay, then the remainder of my last two weeks listening to my reasons for leaving, making plans to fix their problems (so nobody else would leave), expressing their appreciation for my hard work and helping me find leads for a new job. At least three people on the executive team offered to provide a glowing reference for me, should I ever need one. My last paycheck was deposited a couple of weeks after I left. One of the classiest groups of people I may ever have the pleasure of working for.

I should point out that they lost nothing by this.

An employer who sends nasty emails and withholds pay is ruining the possibility of a valuable future re-hire, causing needless guilt, turning his own employees against him, building himself a poor reputation, and begging for a lawsuit. It's a heavy price to pay for his own pettiness.

A year later, SpitScript is back with:

- TypeScript annotations everywhere

- Unit tests (via AVA)

- Several bugfixes for line comments, block comments, and more

It's more useful than ever.

Devil's advocate: How about an issue/PR tracker that lets users pay for priority? A simple bidding system. If BigCorp International is willing to pay $200/hour for IE10 support, they can be next on your list. And afterward, an bug with significant community support totalling $50/hour, pledged by 50 different users. With allowances for your own preferences as maintainer and the needs of the community, of course, but giving people who care the most the opportunity to put their money where their pain is.