Definitely seen this first hand as well, as well as seen change happen!
While I agree you should not attempt significant rewrites right away, and spend time to develop your knowledge of system...
don't just sit back and wait. That won't help solve the problem.
1. Be up front about your opinions and rally the group around the long-term goal to improve code quality. Do it in a positive manner where it's clear that you want to make an impact and help make changes for the better! (not just complaints)
2. Explain your reasoning clearly (testing, code quality, engineer happiness, etc) and ask for input / get buy-in. Open up the discussion.
3. Bring this feedback up consistently as an important part of your experience at this company (in 1-1's, and other team meetings)
Good ways to do this are when discussing OKRs, retrospectives, etc.
Believe that YOU have the ability to spark a change and develop real pride amongst the team!
If you don't feel this is possible, this is not the right place for you.
1. Tried Press Release company that says they will push your articles out to thousands of media sources - didn't work as well as we hoped, because they do just what they say: "push the article out in a feed", no guarantees it will even be picked up. I'd be careful with this one.
2. Contacted relevant bloggers - works pretty well. You need to find relevant bloggers so your web app is in line with their interests. Then they will likely write about you.
3. SEM - Google adwords. This can work, depending on the cost of your keywords. For popular keywords (eg. "Social media") this may be too expensive to see any results at all. It's a great way to test out initial response to your web app and test the overall market demand. Depending on your revenue model, if you can figure out how to set your adwords budget so that you have a low enough average cost of acquiring a customer, you can have great results.
4. Blogging - can be VERY effective if you keep generating relevant information/content, especially in the long term for organic search engine optimization. Don't dis-count the use of Twitter / Facebook, to promote your articles, re-tweet, etc. This takes time and you might not see results right away.
5. Try a social-media advertising app - of course we use our own product! Yes, a shameless plug, but depending on your webapp and target market (great for apps targeting the younger generation), investing in social media marketing may be a great way to get users. Check out our platform http://www.incentibox.com/ - you can set up contest or rewards program in minutes and get your visitors to help spread the word amongst their friends. It's always refreshing to hear that people signed up because of word-of-mouth!
6. Cold email / cold call - This imho is the best way to get INSTANT feedback. To start, call / email 20 ppl a day, and see if there's any interest. If yes, then it's a numbers game, and you should invest more time into this.
I would suggest trying all that you can think of for promoting. In the beginning it will always seem like guerrilla marketing - it pretty much is! But hopefully that will lead you to discover which methods work for you and which don't. Good luck!
We use Chase - also got the $200 promotion for opening checking account. (google this promotion) No complaints yet! I've heard good reviews from ppl about many of the big banks, though. Choose something convenient for you.
I have the 13", and I would strongly recommend this if you plan to be taking it around a lot. It's the perfect size / weight for me, and I don't think twice about bringing it around. In regards to the window management, I have to agree. It took a while to get used to, but now that I'm used to it, it's no problem. It's really just what you're accustomed to. Another note is that Mac devs love TextMate, but I've always just used VIM, so Mac is no better to me in this category!
I was a big linux user that switched to MBP too a couple years ago. I was very skeptical myself, but I'm very happy with the switch. Besides looking cool, here's some other points from my experience: It just works better. Granted, a couple years ago, ubuntu wasn't as nice as it is now, Mac OSX just works so flawlessly, never restart, never shutdown (just close the lid), sleeps and starts up in literally 1 second, great battery, connects to wifi flawlessly, and LOVE the multitouch mouse features. I also really like certain programs including iMovie, Logic (music production), Photoshop. I've tried switching to Gimp, for example, which just doesn't feel right to an old-time Photoshop user. On Ubuntu, I was pretty happy with overall experience, and if I was ONLY using it for development, it would be just fine. I would recommend Mac to any developer, but if you are already very comfortable with your Linux laptop, you're probably not missing anything THAT compelling. BTW, I got my mbp for about $1300 and would not think it's worth it for much more than that.
Yes - it really depends on your needs. For example, i have recently done a ruby on rails backend, with backbone.js for frontend app. You can use PHP for backend, with backbone for frontend. In fact, that's a great place for you to start learning. Backbone.js will be used for your client-side code that runs in the browser.
If you know some programming, you're kinda where I was when I started learning Javascript. I just jumped in using jQuery, because I wanted to write cross-browser code. Start by looking through the jQuery plugins website, find cool plugins you want to use, and incorporate jQuery plugins into your apps. Look through the plugin code to learn how it works. Then make your own plugins when you need them. For backbone.js, the online tutorials are good. You'll get the hang of it - good luck!
At incentiBox, we use mysql for transactional stuff, and MongoDB when we need fast inserts and then need to do data mining / analysis in the future (offline). We find this effective for logging, analytics type things.
While I agree you should not attempt significant rewrites right away, and spend time to develop your knowledge of system... don't just sit back and wait. That won't help solve the problem.
1. Be up front about your opinions and rally the group around the long-term goal to improve code quality. Do it in a positive manner where it's clear that you want to make an impact and help make changes for the better! (not just complaints) 2. Explain your reasoning clearly (testing, code quality, engineer happiness, etc) and ask for input / get buy-in. Open up the discussion. 3. Bring this feedback up consistently as an important part of your experience at this company (in 1-1's, and other team meetings) Good ways to do this are when discussing OKRs, retrospectives, etc.
Believe that YOU have the ability to spark a change and develop real pride amongst the team! If you don't feel this is possible, this is not the right place for you.