I've been using Bombfell for the past three months and have been pleased with most of their selections. It allows me to not have to worry about selecting clothes and have something/someone else do it for me.
Side projects are a great way to improve your knowledge of a language or learn a new language. Creating a number of side projects, most of them fit under this category. Each project has furthered my knowledge of a language, framework, or best practices.
From my experience, developing a project (regardless of scale) is a better form of learning than reading about it. You get instant gratification when you see your project render/compile without error. You're learning in real time, seeing your project work, and learning from trial and error.
Having a side project doesn't imply you're trying to create a startup. What happened to just creating for fun/enjoyment? Reconstruct your sandbox and play.
1. How so? I participated and won this hackathon is a resume booster? How does that compare with actual paid work from a client?
2. Getting a client and working on a paid project gives me plenty of direction as to what to build in my spare time.
3. What?
4. You're only getting money if they think your idea is best. One person/group wins, not everyone. You could have been doing something with guaranteed pay, not spec work.
5. Sure, you get new ideas on the table, but that doesn't mean they're good ideas. Not to mention you're giving away free ideas.
6. You're not really getting feedback from the community. You're getting it from the corporate sponsor.
7. No. They'll simply award the winner(s) $10k for IP and off they go. A win for the company.
Thanks for the feedback. Prior to the current styling, I had a screenshot with title, author, description, etc to the right. I found it cluttered and difficult to read through a list of projects. I'll keep working on it and see if I can find something.
I've also built plenty of Django projects without a lot of the mentioned utilities, but that doesn't make them any less useful or recommended. I'm certain the developer knows that Ubuntu isn't the only OS and Heroku isn't the only deployment platform. I'd argue against the mainstream statement. Ubuntu is one of the more popular server distros used. Do you expect someone to cover every possible platform and PaaS provider?
What Kenneth is offering is obviously a guide with recommendations and not requiring you to use them for your projects. It's ultimately up to the developer to decide what to use.
The Getting Started with Django series is off to a great start. Kenneth's soothing voice and background music makes it easy on the ears to listen to. The video quality is also great. The initial subjects are, in my opinion, essential to almost every web developer working in a multi-environment setting. Not to mention a great introduction for those just getting into Django. I'm looking forward to more of Getting Started with Django from Kenneth to see what else is in store for those new to Django and to those that utilize Django often.
If hurry means more than 8 months. I edited the post to include the date I contacted them (August 24, 2011). The writing style for the copied code vs additional code they wrote is inconsistent.
Valid point. When I first looked at the code I knew the initialize code was fairly common, but then I noticed the unnecessary require. I started to explore a bit more and noticed that the style changes from the copied code[1]. They also place their require statements immediately after module declaration[1]. Not to mention the use of single quotes vs double quotes.