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Ask HN: Review my "Teach Myself Programming" project, Getset (Please be gentle)

10 points by christonog ↗ HN
Hi HN community,

www.getsetapp.com

Getset helps you find the cheapest method of travel, whether by air, bus, or driving, to get to your destination. I got the idea from the frustration I experienced going to different sites and manually calculating and comparing the costs of travel (should I drive there, or take the bus? Train or plane?). I'd like to one day turn it into a monetizeable venture, but it's mainly meant as a learning tool to help me obtain the skills necessary to build my own start up in the near future.

I've been teaching myself how to program via this project for the past 7 months or so part-time. It's a rails app (no surprise there), and I would greatly appreciate your feedback (technical, marketing, monetization, and features).

I know that there are a number of issues with it in its current state, but I hope that it provides some value to you. As this is the first thing I've actually built, please be gentle with the feedback! :-)

Thanks a bunch!

17 comments

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jim_h
I tried Boston -> SF, and got an error 'The change you wanted was rejected. 422'
christonog
A quick google search and test leads me to believe the app isn't playing well with Noscript. I'll have to dig down further on what the underlying issue might be. Thanks for catching that bug!
JimmyL
For the cities with multiple airports (DC, NY, Chicago, etc.), just have once choice - "NY" as opposed to "NY - JFK" and "NY - LGA". Your target user seems to be someone who is more interested in getting from point A to point B by the cheapest means possible, as opposed to someone who's going to fly there - in which case they would think of their origin as (for example) New York, as opposed to La Guardia.

I would also add travel time in there - time is money, and it's not much good saying that it costs $70 in gas to drive somewhere if you don't also mention that it takes five days.

If you really want to get fancy, add an option for the full cost of the trip, for lack of a better word - meaning that the plane price includes travel to/from the airport (making reasonable assumptions about cost) and the car price includes accommodation as needed.

jshotwell
Or maybe offer one choice: "NY", and present the different results alongside car and bus options.

Plane: $119 from JFK, $134 from LGA.

Car: $52 in gas.

Bus: $68

christonog
I didn't think about presenting it in that fashion, thanks for helping out!
christonog
Travel time and adding in the additional costs (checked baggage and such) would be useful, thanks for the feedback!
frossie
Well - good job! Nothing like scratching your own itch, is there?

I'd say the biggest priority would be adding time estimates - the people who are going to be using this kind of service are probably uncertain of the geography. I don't think you necessarily need to add fillers at this stage, everybody knows air travel automatically adds 3 hours or whatever. But the length of the actual trip itself would definitely tip the scale into real usefulness.

christonog
Thanks! It sure does feel good to built something. The time estimates are something I'm currently working on as well, thanks for helping validate the feature list priority :-).
tunaslut
put in the same city for from and to and you get an error. nice job for a first app!
christonog
Thanks! I need to add that to validations :-)
retroafroman
First off, congratulations, this seems like a cool tool, and the landing page is nice and clean.

Second, I'm seeing some problems with the site right now. It was quick to load, but then it seems like it takes forever to do the search (Charlotte, NC to SLC, UT) then just ends in an error. It's done this the few times I've tried.

Also, if searching does take a while (I imagine it would) a nice 'loading' page might be a useful addition to tell users what it's doing (did it actually start searching? should I click the button again?).

christonog
Thanks for the feedback, a loading page would be useful. What specific error are you receiving? Or is it different errors everytime? I'll have to scour my log file to see what's actually going on. Thanks again!
retroafroman
It waits a while, then goes to a page that says:

We're sorry, but something went wrong.

We've been notified about this issue and we'll take a look at it shortly.

As a quick look at the page source, it looks like a 500 server error. Is the site working for you? I've tried a few other searches and they don't work. I'm on Windows 7 with Google Chrome, in case you're curious.

LeBlanc
Very cool first app! Congratulations on shipping something awesome.

One feature you could add is the ability to set your mpg. My car, unfortunately, gets nowhere near 30mpg.

You could also have a google maps display that shows the calculated route by car, bus, or airplane.

Good luck!

EddieLomax
Very nice! Some thoughts: Is the average fuel efficiency really 30 MPG? Seems kind of high. Maybe you could select your car with the average MPG per model? Could you check local gas prices for more real-time accuracy instead of a stock $2.50? I think the list should just be cities, and on the results page, you could have NY - LGA: $$$ / NY - JFK: $$$ because as a traveler bound to New York, I would have to select each NY option, submit, go back, re-submit, just to see which airport would be cheaper. One stop shopping, and all that. Great job with it so far!