Building Kinetic in public
After a bunch of failed projects in 2021, I'm kicking of 2022 with a new project that (hopefully) does not repeat the mistakes I made last year. Kinetic (https://onkinetic.io) is a platform for spinning up development environments quickly, targeted at those teaching people to code and those learning to code.
Instructors
Instructors will be able to create custom development environments that anyone that takes their course or watches their videos can launch with one click. The idea is that instructors will save time in a few different ways:
- No more re-recording due to environment setup issues
- No more editing videos due to environment setup issues
- Much less development environment support is needed when students run into issues
Learners
Anyone learning to code can spin up a custom or template development environment without configuration. This removes a pretty major technical hurdle for new programmers, as some percentage of those that want to learn to code give up during the development environment setup phase.
In addition, Kinetic will host your projects so you can use them in your job search or for other reasons.
Roast me
Feel free to ask me tough questions, point out why I'm wrong, or give any type of honest feedback. I want to be sure I'm doing this one right, and I value the opinion of the IH community.
If you're someone who teaches coding, I'd love to have a chat with you - feel free to DM me on Twitter.
This looks like a problem nobody has solved yet. Love the idea 🔥
Thanks Dagobert!
I never recorded a tutorial but consumed a ton.
I remember the days I didn't understand what virtualenv does. Why should I use it. It took a long time for me to read it through and have an understanding. I think it's good not to deal with it but don't think it's helpful for newbies. They need to learn it one way or another.
As I said I never recorded one for broad audience and I can't think of how it can be an issue. TBH from an instructor perspective it's 15 minutes more content for a course. I believe there are a few course creators in indiehackers. I'd highly suggest you to talk with them.
I never published a codebase that I learned online. Maybe because I'm not looking for a job. But I know people does. Still IMO benefits for the users are slim. I'd suggest you to sharpen your marketing on instructors.
This is great feedback, thanks so much.
I agree they do need to learn things like virtualenv, but I'm not convinced that they need to be learned right away when starting out. Some people give up on learning to code when they get stuck setting up their development environment, so I'm taking a bet on the idea that learning things like virtualenv can be put off until a bit later in the journey. I'd love to hear counterpoints here.
You're correct - it's an extra 9 minutes based on looking at around 20 YouTube videos (so take that with a grain of salt). However, 9 (or 15) minutes of video time is likely much more actual recording time.
Agree 100% here. The idea I had was to get instructors using Kinetic in their courses, which would drive student sign ups.
Again, thanks for the great feedback.
Agreed on it's not a requirement for beginners. I didn't use it for a while either. I'm installing packages globally and they work, which made it more complicated to understand at first. Anyways.
I'm still not sold on this part. Beginner tutorials doesn't usually cover 3rd party library/packages. Using standard library doesn't always require virtual environments. However you don't need to aim for beginners. I for example installed ruby to try out rails. Well I needed to read a few articles to get through. And now I have ruby on my machine probably outdated and I'm gonna need to do another research on how to update it. This project could save me a lot of time just to try out other/alternative technologies.
On the other hand it's solely a great solution just for avoiding node packages for example. I don't like to code in js and one of the reasons being those packages. I also have an unstable internet connection and sometimes I can't even start a new project. It doesn't fetch from package manager. 🤷♂️
That's why I love google colab for instance. On my local machine I have to write unnecessarily sophisticated code for a simple task. Because my connection may die while requesting anything. Plus the speed they offer is IDK 100x to what I have. That speed factor could be another selling point for you. I can't be the only person with bad connection :(
My question would be how would you incentives it. It's a drawback for an instructor to add an extra dependency for their course. They usually list what's required to complete the course. It goes like an operating system and IDE they use. Extra sign-up flow for the student may decrease their sign-up rates.
At this point I'm not sure who you going to charge, how you'll monetize it.
This is the main thing I'm working on figuring out, and you've given me a few great new perspectives to consider. Thanks again for the feedback!