Ask HN: Good 'in-a-day' exercises for business development / marketing?

1 point

16 years ago

Recently, I was inspired by the bout of 'in-a-day' start-up posts floating around and rails rumble. I wanted to attempt to code a web-app in a day, using some technology I have wanted to try out in a while: Rails3 and Heroku. It went pretty well, and it was loads of fun and the following is a tweet log of the process I went through:

* Time for fun. Inspired by my last tweet - going to sharpen the programming saw today http://goo.gl/VgJo by trying to build a site in a day.

* Going to be trying out rails3 and http://heroku.com/

* Domain Registered - $12USD wonder if anyone knows a cheaper find?

* One of my favourite DuckDuckGo commands:http://duckduckgo.com/?q=!pw+10+strong

* heroku.com account created.

* That was nice - heroku does automatic SSH key configuration when you create your app.

* Sweet - first iteration is live on Heroku - next up, cucumber tests, and a splash of jquery

* Second iteration is live on Heroku - still no tests or jquery - worked on layout, added top girl and top guy movie lists.

* Three hours and basic functionality is working for my fun app - Is it a girl movie or a guy movie? http://mypickflick.com heaps more to do.

I got exactly what I wanted out of the process, I learned a stack of stuff about Rails3 and Heroku. Plus I have since gone back and used the site as a testing ground for other new technologies I want to learn more about.<p>But it has gotten me thinking, what are other 'in-a-day' exercises that I can use to sharpen my saw in the other elements of creating a business? Something that I can research a bit, execute and hopefully see some sort of result (so I can learn what works and doesn't) in about a day?