interesting take - thanks for reading and the feedback. I think i'm assuming the hardware store employee here (the LLM) will in fact always have more knowledge of the inventory than you, and you just give it context.
The author seems to incorrectly conflate UX and visual design.
Dribbble is purely for showcasing visual design (aka technical implementation). It's the price of admission for being a designer. Dribbble isn't for, nor should it be for, explaining UX decisions.
User experience design and interaction design are different skill sets within the design discipline.
If you are impressed with someone's dribbble, then arrange for a phone interview or an in-person white boarding session.
Design is problem solving just like engineering, just a different type of problem set. Treat it as such.
The value and utility of such a service will be so significant that it will trump most individual's concerns about privacy. Facebook has lead a successful charge in this direction for the last 9 years.
I definitely see the value in receiving these kinds of wide-reach-yet-important social updates.
However, I think the opportunity (from both a business and user experience perspective) is for a true digital representation of your current real life social network.
I could have expanded on the frequency and engagement point. Currently, the most representative social interactions happen off of services like FB (such as texting, phone calls, going to the movies, grabbing coffee, meeting someone, etc).
FB then relies on the user to input this data with the promise that the data will be spit back out in a relevant, useful, and entertaining way.
Phones, contrastingly, can pick up all this external engagement passively and produce a more representative of a true life social network. Because its data collection is passive, it can dynamically adapt a network without explicit user input.
It depends whether you're doing a consumer facing site, a personal site, or a b2b site. Consumer sites tend to be better off with .com's. Personal sites and b2b have a little more wiggle room because you tend to link to them directly (as opposed to search). SEO is really what is comes down to though, if someone spells your company name (or how they think it's spelled) into google, will you appear at the top of the list?
It is better than hiring a professional. If you're in the business of building and running web businesses you should know the basics, regardless of how much your time is worth.
Thanks so much. From the consensus it definitely seems like python might be best to get my feet wet, although I've heard ruby is a bit cleaner. I'll dive into python and see how it goes. Thanks for all the help!