Thats a harsh way to put it but somehow true. Its less about imagination and more about ability.
The people who need this site the most are people who are new to programming or don't have any university background (online courses, self taught). Unlike you these people DO struggle starting their own project and they DO need some help setting up their node.js environment.
The problem is that many of us who learned programming on our own have gone through these initial struggles (although we might have forgotten it). People who are learning online are led to believe that becoming a programmer is as easy as taking a code academy course and when they finish the course, they can't do much cause they have been gamified and handheld too much. Most of these people are giving up because there is this sharp fall from finishing an online course and becoming a 'developer'. We are trying to help these people.
Good developers are not in terrible need of a portfolio but the new ones or the ones who are changing their career path are in need of it to actually get a job.
It feels that you want to solve multiple problems at once, not impossible, but more complicated.
There is a great leap between installing git and node.js and writing a working, publishable project. I wish it was that easy. The site also didn't explain the process of creating a project from start to finish. It would be nice to see the time requirement for completing one. Is it 1 day or 1 month?
I definitely agree that there is a great drop-out among wannabees, but for them codeacademy style portals are a better fit imho. I tried to teach my designer girlfriend using codeacademy and it didn't go very well, but it was probably a motivational issue. Then I showed her how to modify HTML and she is able to update her site now without my help. So finding the sweet spot it very hard and I feel you need to target more accurately.
For example are you sure somebody just learned about functions, for loops and arrays are OK with command line tools and understand how GIT, Grunt, Gulp and node.js relate?
Thanks for your feedback! We will definitely make it our goal to provide a better explanation of how a project will be built start to finish, and how long it will take to build it, from the onset.
About the target audience. We actually built Zyring for people like me. I was a PM at Microsoft who wanted to transition to a developer role. I learned programming through self-learning (didn't follow traditional CS path) but always found myself building things that were either insignificant or I was handheld through the entire process so I couldn't recreate my work. As I talked to more people, I realized that there are a lot more people like me. I completely agree with you that we need to find that "sweet spot" where the user (like your gf) can build a project on her own but still get the right guidance so she doesn't get overwhelmed and lost.
I would really love to talk with you and/or your girlfriend to get your feedback on how we can help and improve Zyring. My email is zaryafaraj@zyring.com. Thanks!
perfect. We would love to talk with you more to see what you will see as valuable on the resume of a candidate. I will be really happy if you could spare a few moments anytime you are free. My email is alif@zyring.com
We don't charge anyone for doing the projects and all the code that a person does is owned by themselves (we dont even host your code or know where it is). Anyone that works on Zyring can do whatever they want with their code.
"Functional examples for software that lacks good functional examples" sounds super valuable for a portfolio also they create tangible value for people who need them. Your dropwizard example at https://github.com/exratione/scala-dropwizard-guice-example is a perfect example.
Perfect. We would love to talk to you about what you would find useful for you on the iOS projects. We have a bunch of projects for iOS but are in the process of refining them. I would be super happy if you emailed me at alif@zyring.com
BTW, the person who is defining the iOS projects is one of the devs on Microsoft Office for iOS and Mac (which ironically is the most complex app for ios).
Good point. Thanks for the feedback. You really don't need to sign up to experience what projects we offer but some stuff requires sign up as you said. We will make sure that we remove the ambiguities and work on our copywriting.
As for your questions :
1- Experts in the field working with us have come up with Applications. We are working with some companies so that they can put sponsored applications on our website that they would love to see on a candidates resume. In addition, if anyone has an idea for a project they can submit it on the project page and we will work with them to refine it and put it there.
2- The community does the code reviews. As you said this is unclear right now on the landing page. Basically, if there is a person who have done the project before you with a good score, they will review the code. Reviewing someone's code is also part of your portfolio so you get a score for doing it.
Thanks. There's probably a lesson here: if two paragraphs of text in a comment on HN does a better job of explaining what your web site does than its own landing page does, maybe your landing page needs a bit of a re-think.
Thanks for feedback. Apologies. Most of the stuff we do requires a bit of javascript. We are going to definitely add something to our backlog so that people with disabled JS can use it.
Seriously, don't worry about this. Worry about problems that more than a miniscule fraction of people actually have. Catering to the 0.0001% of people who disable half their browser and then complain that the web stops working is a waste of time (and I like browsing in w3m as much as anyone).
I agree it's probably not worth spending much time on for most sites but I just get annoyed when the page is completely blank. It takes very little effort to stick a <noscript> tag on the landing page that contains a few paragraphs explaining what the site does and what services it offers. That at least gives me some information that I can use to decide whether or not I want to trust the site by allowing script execution.
