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  • Showing only topics with the tag "development". Back to normal view
    1. Billing for web hosting

      Hi all, I just finished building a static webpage for a local artist. She's been generous and sociable, paying me $100/hr for my work. Despite some reservations toward taking responsibility over...

      Hi all,

      I just finished building a static webpage for a local artist. She's been generous and sociable, paying me $100/hr for my work. Despite some reservations toward taking responsibility over other people's hosting, she's asked me for a monthly rate to host the site. Right now I'm looking at renting a basic Hetzner VPS for $10/month. This would come at the added benefit of scaling up over time for other clients.

      I want to work toward establishing good business practices, and that means charging people fairly - i.e. never simply because I can. Aside from the cost of hosting, how do you measure the cost of responsibility over a static site? A one-time setup fee? Hoping for some input from people who have more business experience than myself.

      Edit:

      Part of the goal is to host multiple artist pages on the same site, and apply some server software I've developed that allows for event coordination etc. I need a VPS for that.

      I've run this idea by my client, who is part of the art collective, and she's in favor of it. I'm going to charge $50 for setup and $10/month for the first three months, then adjust in the new year based on how it's going.

      27 votes
    2. Best options for domain registrar and static site hosting in 2026?

      I am helping a small business owner make and host a static website. What are the best options for hosting the site and paying for the domain? For hosting, I was considering GitHub Pages, since...

      I am helping a small business owner make and host a static website. What are the best options for hosting the site and paying for the domain?

      For hosting, I was considering GitHub Pages, since it's free and just built in to GitHub.

      For the domain registrar, I see a lot of people on places like Reddit discussing Namecheap, Porkbun, Cloudflare, and Ionos. I was originally considering GoDaddy, but I saw a lot of posts were saying that was the #1 place to avoid. I saw a lot of older posts recommending Google Domains, but I see that has since been killed by Google.

      30 votes
    3. Adulting -- what advice or encouragement did you receive / wish you had received when you were just starting out moving out?

      (inspired by a deleted post. I'll respect the user and just make this a generic topic.) What was the hardest part about growing up into an independent adult for you? Was there some advice or...

      (inspired by a deleted post. I'll respect the user and just make this a generic topic.)

      What was the hardest part about growing up into an independent adult for you? Was there some advice or mental Eureka! moment that gave you a big boost?

      Affordability and employment are at a crisis level for our youth these days. Want to share some hardships you experienced, or big hurdle you had to navigate out of, as a way to encourage others that things will get better?

      54 votes
    4. Starting a video game creation club

      I got a kiosk for two days at my school last week to present my ideas to college students to gauge interest. 16 people said they'd be interested. There's even a teacher that'd want to be involved,...

      I got a kiosk for two days at my school last week to present my ideas to college students to gauge interest. 16 people said they'd be interested. There's even a teacher that'd want to be involved, he teaches a game programming course. There's also a university club nearby that wants to team up. (Also mid to long term, I'm in Quebec City so I could contact the many local studios around the campus.)

      I wonder what the people of Tildes expect when they hear about a video game creation club. Have you been in one before?

      I wrote myself a brainstorm document, here are the general ideas:

      • Every field of study is welcome. Game projects are great for multidisciplinary groups, and people can also do stuff outside their field of study.
      • General roles (someone could have many): project lead, game designer, gameplay programmer, systems and tools programmer, art director, 2D/3D/animation artist, UI/UX, composer, sound designer, writer, QA, voice actor, etc.
      • Around 2 hours together per week, meeting in either a classroom or a club location if we get one.
      • Would be nice if people shared what they learned during the week at each session.
      • Game jam orientation? A college semester lasts 15 weeks. We could pick a theme at the start to drive the game ideas we want to do. Scope control is really important.
      • Building a portfolio should be a main goal.
      • Do we allow people from outside the club to come hang out? There are probably solo people working on their own games.
      • How to handle intellectual property? Should we eventually try to sell games for the club finances? I guess we should at least be allowed to use the games for club marketing.
      • If we do console games, we'd need an NDA. Not sure a club can even get console dev access, though we could probably work with a third party for that.
      • Some nice stuff: the school has a recording booth we could record voices in. We might also have access to the school's servers if we get the proper approvals.
      • We could demo the games in the school's public spaces to get feedback.
      • The club could have a website, itch.io page, Discord.
      • How to train people who have never made a game before?

      Did I overthink this or forget about important details?

      24 votes
    5. Software engineers / programmers: how’s it going?

      All of my SWE friends and coworkers agree this is a deeply weird time to be in the industry. LLM coding has dominated many (but not all) tech companies. Some of it is cool and exciting, but a lot...

      All of my SWE friends and coworkers agree this is a deeply weird time to be in the industry. LLM coding has dominated many (but not all) tech companies. Some of it is cool and exciting, but a lot of it is terrible and horrifying. I thought it could be a good time to do a vibe check.

      Some possible questions to answer if you’d like:

      • How has your work changed in the past year? How much of your daily work now involves LLM tools?
      • Are you enjoying your work more, less, or the same? Has your relationship with work changed in general?
      • Do you feel like you’re working more or less now? The same?
      • Are you hopeful or fearful of the future (let’s say next 5 years) of SWE? Mixed?
      • Have you found any useful tips or advice for thriving in the current landscape?
      • Has your career trajectory changed? Do you plan on seeking out different types of roles?

      Also it would be useful to give whatever background info you’re comfortable sharing to help ground things like: size of company, years of experience, type of role, location, etc.

      Any and all discussion around the industry is welcome!

      42 votes
    6. Anyone using a DGX Spark?

      The prices have increased, and even before people called it too expensive. I am just wondering - do you have one? What do you use it for? I've been thinking of getting one (as a business expense,...

      The prices have increased, and even before people called it too expensive.

      I am just wondering - do you have one? What do you use it for? I've been thinking of getting one (as a business expense, I guess the price is high, but then again - what other option do you have for compute? renting GPUs is quite expensive, any comparable amount of VRAM is very expensive - ok if you have space and mostly want to do inference, I guess you have better options (3090 or 5090)

      For me, I have just been considering having some more compute available for robotics, finetuning, trying out selfhosted and fine tuned LLMs, among other things. My other setup (M1Pro 32GB and a 1070 Mini) could work for some stuff, but especially for the robotics part it's mostly about NVIDIA...

      Curious about any experiences.

      5 votes
    7. Is there any interest in building a Tildes successor?

      I love Tildes. I am not the most active member here, but I do make an effort to contribute. This site fills a hole for me not even close to be filled by other sites. It has that small local pub...

      I love Tildes. I am not the most active member here, but I do make an effort to contribute. This site fills a hole for me not even close to be filled by other sites. It has that small local pub feel. All names are familiar, even if I haven't interacted with people directly and there is a general sense of people being aligned with wanting to be part of a 'better' community.

      I know there has been a lot of discussion about missing features here and that ultimately leading to some users wanting to leave, because they can't block the content they don't want to see.

      With Deimos's announcement that the site is being sunset, it immediately made we ask: Can we build a successor?

      That has to be immediately followed with acknowledgment that it would be extremely hard (both in building the software and building the community) and very unlikely to succeed.

      With that out of the way, is there any interest?

      If there is, I'd like to here from you in this topic with your thoughts on how it should be run, must have features missing from Tildes, any features of Tildes not needed in an MVP (minimum viable product) and really any thoughts you have on the subject. What would be a deal-breaker?

      I am especially interested to hear on thoughts of how it should be administrated. Do we like the benevolent dictator model? Would a committee be better? Are there other examples of systems that work well?

      Tildes isn't going anywhere for a long while by the sounds of it, which I'm really grateful of. Please don't read this as any kind of descent, mutiny or call to leave. I mostly just want to make sure that if there's desire for this community to NOT be sunset, there's at least an option.

      53 votes
    8. What JavaScript framework should I use?

      Little backstory. I'm the sole developer of delphitools, a collection of free and open source tools for artists, developers and just computer touchers in general. I'm using Next.JS and as such,...

      Little backstory. I'm the sole developer of delphitools, a collection of free and open source tools for artists, developers and just computer touchers in general. I'm using Next.JS and as such, React, but I don't think I like it anymore. DT is a completely offline exported application, and Next is meant for middleware-heavy apps with server layers, which I just don't have. I also just don't get on with React's endless use effect garbage and have little love for TypeScript, and if I'm honest, DT happens to be made like that because I wanted to try the shiny new thing. Now that I have around 60-ish individual micro-apps contained within, I think it's time for a rewrite.

      I'm therefore looking for discussion and insights on what tooling is best for me, on the following grounds:

      1. delphitools is export only. There's no server component and it runs completely in the browser. Server capabilities or middleware are not a concern.
      2. I'm not married to JavaScript as the runtime. It's just what I know best, I've been in the industry for a long time, although I'm more familiar with classic JS, not necessarily the JSX react syntax. I'm confident I could learn something new though.
      3. I'm looking for fast build times, a smart-ish compiler that can ideally hot reload and give me insights into bad practices (Next.JS does this quite well)
      4. As close to bare metal as possible, I can't begin to enumerate the amount of times the NextJS Turbopack auto-caching thing has caused me significant headaches.

      I'm a designer, not a developer, but I can manage my way around. I'm also not opposed to using Agents, but I would like to - if for my own sake more than anything - be able to work without them if need be. Suggesting Ruby that compiles to HTML or some other crazy new pipeline probably won't work.

      Curious to hear your experiences and recommendations. Thanks!

      17 votes
    9. What's a game you're dying to play that doesn't exist?

      Greetings everyone. I'm currently in the process of getting a Computer Science degree for two primary reasons. 1.) Because I want to get a stable development job where I'm currently employed, but...

      Greetings everyone. I'm currently in the process of getting a Computer Science degree for two primary reasons. 1.) Because I want to get a stable development job where I'm currently employed, but most importantly to me 2) Because I want to make video games and have the educational credentials to confidently do so.

      I know I know, you don't need a computer science degree to create video games, and my program doesn't even teach game development. So I have a long journey ahead learning game dev alongside my program in my own time. Also I have no intentions of working at an actual game company.

      So my question today is,

      What is a game that you are dying to play, that nobody has made yet?

      I'm trying to get some inspiration. It's hard to think about something that truly doesn't exist, because there's so many amazing games already. I'm genuinely curious.

      If you're struggling like I am, feel free to list a game that's been made exactly once but no ones been able to reproduce it's genius.

      I'll start,

      I am DYING to play a factory builder game, but with ARPG gameplay. So Factorio / Dyson Sphere Program meets Diablo 4 & Path Of Exile. I just think this would create such a dopamine addicting game that would be impossible to pull away from if done right. My idea would be to have the factory be the loot crafting mechanic for progressively better armos, while the ARPG is what you use to get the materials needed to craft truly insane gear. Idk, if done right I think this could have legs.

      47 votes
    10. Are there any games that had their development abandoned that you followed where you wish that continued/completed development?

      For this post I was thinking of games more along the lines of an early access title that was abandoned or had a 1.0 release announced when it was not feature complete or still had bugs/issues that...

      For this post I was thinking of games more along the lines of an early access title that was abandoned or had a 1.0 release announced when it was not feature complete or still had bugs/issues that were never addressed. If you feel like a live service/MMO game that has shut down should have kept going, feel free to share it as well.

      41 votes
    11. Any fellow software engineers using paid GitHub copilot?

      Much to my chagrin, the company I work for has done a lot in terms of steering/ pushing all software development be done through AI for some time now. And what gives me much grin, GitHub changed...

      Much to my chagrin, the company I work for has done a lot in terms of steering/ pushing all software development be done through AI for some time now.

      And what gives me much grin, GitHub changed their pricing structure for copilot. I'll skip the details the key fact is what used to be about $30/month per person + maybe few bucks in overages is now resulting in us hitting our usage cap on the 2nd day of the month. Overage costs this month will be hundreds of dollars per developer. I know this is an unexpected expense as I mentioned it casually to our CTO who had no idea.

      I'm curious if this is going to force them to rethink the AI strategy. The incessant pushing to use more and more AI maybe will finally bite them on the ass so much they have to ask us to stop or pull back? Or maybe they'll just plunder our salaries, who knows.

      I'm curious if anyone else is in the same situation.

      23 votes
    12. Searching for neighbours on the indie web

      Hi and welcome to this post I was just wondering if anyone else (besides me) is currently interested in the indie web and also in extension 88x31 Buttons. I have a small (and very much...

      Hi and welcome to this post

      I was just wondering if anyone else (besides me) is currently interested in the indie web and also in extension 88x31 Buttons.

      I have a small (and very much in-progress) website that I mostly coded myself. I started sometimes 2 years ago, so in 2024. And through that time it has gone through so many iterations. My site only consists of HTML and CSS and some minimal JavaScript. So I was just wondering if anyone also has an interest in the indie web and more importantly also has some buttons?

      The idea or goal with this post was to just find some more people to add as neighbors because I find it somewhat scary to just ask people out of the blue or email them.

      I also made my own if anyone wants to link it to their site please let me know.

      This is my button:
      https://postimg.cc/xqYQ8dJr

      <a href="https://luna-uwu.nekoweb.org"><img src="https://luna-uwu.nekoweb.org/button-luna.png" alt="Luna's Button"/></a>
      

      I guess the link to the site is this:
      https://luna-uwu.nekoweb.org/ (I think i posted it before)

      Some "definitions"

      What is the Indie Web?

      It is some sort of a movement to bring back personal blogs and personal websites there are a few hosting alternatives similar to geocities in the 2000s. One is called neocities and the one I'm currently using is Nekoweb because indeed the web should be for cats!

      What are these 88x31 Buttons?

      so these buttons usually link to other's people site and they are the size of 88x31px it's pretty small but since you can do it in the GIF format, you can even animate them, and they usually look pretty great.
      There are some examples on my site :) on the bottom :)

      I guess that's about it. I hope you have a nice time of day wherever you are.

      43 votes