I wouldn't mistake stupidity for ignorance. A lot of "tech-sensitive", yet non-technical people are using agents/vibe coding these days. Their level of understanding is very basic ("JSON is structured data", "I need to reformat this to fit my need"), but they wouldn't get that the best way of doing things does not necessitate burning tokens.
I believe many non-technical people are spinning up AI agents nowadays without having a basic understanding of what happens behind the scenes, and usually, with no interest in learning. They prompt, watch the agent work and see the magic, without questioning the structure even a little.
I don't think we should blame them, as they are non-technical, but either educate them or put guardrails at the system prompt level.
My European stack:
- OVH for object storage, domain names and simple Wordpress websites
- Scalingo/3DS Outscale for PaaS (looking for alternatives here!)
- Mailjet used to be EU but they've been acquired by Mailgun - don't know if that's an issue. Brevo is okay as an email service provider but they could be way better.
I am working on a document collection app called Superdocu (https://www.superdocu.com), currently adding automated validation features for specific document types.
I wanted to spend less time looking for my next trip and decided to create myself a Chrome Extension that shows me cheap flights at random dates from the nearest airport.
Finally decided to submit it on both Chrome and Firefox [1] extension stores. The app is made with Vanilla JS and jQuery and is currently translated into English and French.
I used Skyscanner's API for the flights, Google's Geocoding API to get the location, Lufthansa's API to get the nearest airport IATA code and Unsplash for the background pictures.
I'm pretty sure there is much to improve, so looking for feedback!
Site is minimalist, which is something I like. I wish the search would accept synonyms for technologies/languages, like "js" or "node.js" would be accepted for respectively Javascript and Node.
I used to work a lot with Wordpress in the past, but as projects tend to be more and more specific, I found Middleman[1] more flexible and for structured content (eg. directories) or for generating pages automatically, using a YAML structure is very convenient.
For my online shop, I use Shopify[2] as it is a side project and I did not want to spend a lot of time writing / setting it up. Shopify proves very convenient and includes a blog if needed.
The border between hilarious and disgusting is sometimes tenuous. When I read these comments by MBAs or any other type of "educated" people, I wonder what their student loans helped them with
Just made a small calculation: for 3,000,000 subscribers, our costs are moving from 1,500$ to about 13,000$ if we go through Mailchimp. I don't understand why they're making us pay for only storing an email list.
It's both about local laws and local accounting customs. They are so different depending on countries that you almost have to develop a separate system if you want to enter another country. Or you keep it so simple that the value added is close to none...
I think it's hard to give people the big picture of what the thought process looked inside the company in a 5-mn read. We've cut through some info to focus on a unique message, but we know our target market, researched as much as we could, conducted (literally) hundreds of interviews, tried to determine painpoints, use/edge cases, etc.
It's a decision that may seem obvious for many, many product categories.
But I can assure you that regarding anything finance-wise, it's simply impossible to launch an app that that complies with local laws everywhere at the same time, especially without proper funding. Take Quickbooks, it exists for 5-10 years, and they're still postponing their launch in the French market. We've gone global since then, and we've grown in 10 weeks way faster than we did in 1 year.
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