I Hit the Top Spot on Hacker News 🙌

Author

Ian Wootten
March 06, 2021

This month I hit the top spot on Hacker News - or rather, an article I wrote for a client did. Granted, it was only for a few hours - but I had my 15 mins of fame (plus a few more).

I was pretty taken aback by this and expected most feedback to be critical of how I'd approached it - there's a reason why we're told to never read the comments on HN. However, I was pleasantly surprised a lot of the feedback was helpful suggestions for other ways I could explore the data. You can read the full article on ScrapingBee.

Hitting the HN frontpage is something that's happened to me once before - the last time for a side project 10 years ago. Each time the user submitting the post hasn't been me, which is nice.

What makes this all the more impressive is that it was my first time using Pandas, MatplotLib and Jupyter notebooks. They were all new tools to me which I used to explore data and generate charts. You can use all 3 really nicely together within Visual Studio Code under their Jupyter extension. This added with Github CoPilot made for a killer way to quickly navigate datasets.

It was also really nice to be drawing on a bunch of skills - I have a research background, programming skills and am able to write well (You reading this is hopefully proof of that). To be able to work on something that pulls from all of them was really fun. I would love to do more work like this and have had a couple of offers so far.

I realised I've published a whole bunch of things this month, both on my blog, for a client and over on youtube. This has been intermixed with product ideas and client dev work throughout. Looking back it seems a bit crazy, but in a good way! I've included a couple of things I've written below along with the usual assortment of inspirational stories and code. I've also added a couple of affiliate links to kindle bargains I think you might enjoy.

Let me know if you’re enjoying these emails by replying to this one with your thoughts. Have a lovely few weeks.

Until next time, keep on shipping!

Ian

Yay, my words are #1 on @hackernews 🏅 pic.twitter.com/ER4OtG5rNi— Ian Wootten (@iwootten) February 9, 2022 

Stories

Max Rozen describes how he built the first iteration of his SaaS OnlineOrNot over the course of 20 hours outside of his employed work.

I put together this notion database of side projects that users submitted to Hacker News in January. It comes complete with Current Average MRR, tags and links to source. I found it so inspirational seeing all the things devs have been building that they're making actual money from. This took me hours to collect into the early hours of my weekend so I'm hoping you appreciate it!

Tally is a super simple form builder. In this post it's founder Marie Martens explains how they've gone from $0 -$10k MRR in under 2 years.

Peter Askew explains his journey how he's gone from constantly getting let laid off, to selling onions over the internet.

Some Things I Wrote in February

I dig into the HTTP status codes of 90,000 past Products to discover how many are still online today. I also dug into how to use the Product Hunt API responsibly over on my own blog

I explain why your blog is a financial investment and how you can learn from investment theory to grow it.

Code

The full text of the Python Data Science Handbook by Jake VanderPlas.

I covered PDM in my most recent youtube video and it looks like really promising project. It supports PEP582 - A local packages directory, similar to what you might use with npm.

A recently released JS code scanning tool designed to alert you with actionable feedback rather than bombard you with alerts.

I've been using TailwindUI for a few things of late which includes Vue or React versions of components. This 'petite' version of Vue allows you to enhance your server rendered templates, rather than incorporating a full webpack build. I wish someone told me sooner.

A collection of 5000+ Essential Line Icons for use on your next design.

Bargain Kindle Books

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness - £1.49 on Kindle

The 1-Page Marketing Plan: Get New Customers, Make More Money, And Stand Out From The Crowd by Allan Dib - £1.99 on Kindle

A Favourite Website

This "Honest" portfolio had me grinning from ear to ear. It makes fun of the platitudes and generic copy that are now on a lot of freelancers sites. Are any of these on yours?