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Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: May 6th, 2024
  • listless@lemmy.cringecollective.iotoNo Stupid Questions@lemmy.world•Can you read and understand this passage?
    8·
    4 days ago

    I have never read Bleak House, nor do I even know the outline of the plot. This is what I’m getting from it:

    LONDON. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall.

    The scene is London. Michaelmas’ term (shift?) has just finished, and the Lord Chancellor is now sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall.

    Implacable November weather.

    The weather is cold, wet and overcast, as one would expect for November.

    As much mud in the streets, as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill.

    The streets are incredibly muddy, as if the waters of the Biblical Flood of Noah had just receded. So muddy, one would not be surprised to find a giant amphibian frolicking in it up on Holborn Hill.

    Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes - gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun.

    Smoke drifts downward from the chimneys; soft black ash the size of snowflakes coats exposed surfaces. It’s as if everything is dressed in black to mourn the death of the Sun’s warmth and light.

    Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers.

    Dogs and horses are covered in the mud up to their eyeballs, and their owners can hardly tell which ones are theirs.

    Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas, in a general infection of ill-temper, and losing their foot hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.

    Pedestrians fight through the crowded street, their umbrellas bumping into each other, like a seething angry mob. They slip and lose traction at street corners, like the thousands of pedestrians that came before them since the day broke (although “daybreak” is a meaningless term for a day as grey and cloudy as this one.) The mud continues to cake on their boots where the pavement ends, as if the mud was somehow multiplying like money in a rich man’s investment account.

  • listless@lemmy.cringecollective.iotoNo Stupid Questions@lemmy.world•Where do I go if I want to find someone to help me make an app game?
    684·
    25 days ago

    When you hear “I’ve got this great app idea—it just needs someone to code it,” it may sound to you like you’re halfway there. But from a programmer’s point of view, that’s actually the least interesting and riskiest way to start. Here’s why:

    1. There’s no roadmap—just “code this”

    • Undefined scope: If all I have is a vague idea, I don’t know what “done” even looks like. Am I building a basic prototype? A polished product? What features must it have on day one, and what can wait until later?
    • Endless scope creep: Without clear boundaries, every conversation becomes “Just one more little thing,” and suddenly what was supposed to be a weekend project balloons into months (or years).

    2. You’re asking me to invent half the project

    • UI/UX design: How should it look and feel? What screens go where? How do users navigate? That’s a specialized discipline all its own.
    • Product strategy: Who exactly is this for? Why will they use it? How will you reach those users? If you can’t answer that, I can’t write code that solves a real problem.
    • Testing & polish: Code needs testing, bug-fixing, documentation, deployment, maintenance… none of which you’ve accounted for.

    3. No incentives, no commitment

    • Why me? Great programmers want to work on problems they find meaningful, challenging, or fun—and ideally get compensated for their time. “Just code my idea” won’t light anyone’s fire.
    • Who owns it? If I invest weekends or nights building your vision, what do I get? Equity? Pay? Recognition? Without a clear agreement, it’s a recipe for frustration and resentment.
    • Long-term support: Apps need updates, server maintenance, user support. If you haven’t thought through who handles that, you’re building technical debt.

    4. Real success stories are team sports

    • Cross-functional collaboration: The best apps come from teams that include product thinkers, designers, data analysts, marketers—and yes, developers. You can’t outsource half the work and expect a hit.
    • Iterate and learn: You start with sketches or clickable wireframes, show them to real people, iterate, then bring in developers to build a minimum viable product. That way, you’re coding something people actually want.

    What you can do instead

    1. Write a one-page spec: Describe the core problem, your ideal user, key features, and success metrics.
    2. Mock it up: Even hand-drawn sketches of each screen help communicate your vision.
    3. Validate your idea: Talk to potential users. If they’re excited, you’ve got something to build.
    4. Find a partner: A developer who’s excited by your clear plan—and who sees a fair path to reward for their effort.

    In short: coding is only about 20% of what it takes to launch a successful app. If you can’t show a programmer that you’ve thought through the other 80%, they’ll politely pass—because turning a half-baked idea into a working product is a lot more work (and risk) than it looks.