Analytics
A lot of the Analytics platforms are crazy expensive for a new startup. Just one step in the process will cost you at least 1k a month. Using just 2 of these services will already set you back 24k or more a year. That‘s the absolute bare minimum. I don’t exactly see the math in this. Even for enterprise companies, it seems like it would work out better to just employ a developer or two.
These platforms increase their prices the more data you have to store, so I could easily see things getting out of hand quite quickly. The actual storage and processing of the data is not going to be that expensive. It's not incredibly difficult to set up some open source software either. While paying a developer to set the system up might be a big up front cost, at least the price won‘t rise exponentially with your data. You‘d be able to have exactly the features you need. There is also something to be said about the value of hosting your customer data on your own platform.
I’m very thankful that I’ve gotten the chance to use a couple of these platforms for free and learn what they do and how they work. I’ve started collecting my own data and I intend to start building my own custom reports with it.
Unit Testing
This something I haven’t really gotten into before since it hasn’t been very practical. When you’re spending 2 days implementing a new feature that you’re not sure anyone will even use, it makes little sense to spend much time testing it.
I’ve learned a lot about the motivations for testing:
When a developer writes some new code, they may do some manual testing themselves to make sure that it works. Automated testing saves time by allowing you to run a testing suite that does all that for you.
I did some work writing tests using Mocha and Chai. It worked pretty well and it did catch a bug.
Learning to Be Happy Where You Are
I’ve been pretty stressed out for a while and for I while I would think to myself “When x happens, I’ll feel so much better”.
Guess what:
X has happened and I am now realizing my stress hasn’t changed all that much. I’m still stressed. I just have slightly different things worrying me now. The things bugging me now aren’t even as big of a deal. Yeah they kinda suck but I’m doing well for myself right now.
I need to make more of a conscious effort to be less stressed. Not everything is going exactly as I would have hoped but a lot of stuff is. I can relax