What have I been doing for 10 months?
I’ve gotten a number of emails asking for part 2 of the ValidationLabel post that I wrote 10 months ago, and a number of people have said there’s problems with the sample code on aapl.codeplex.com/ and asked for updated code samples. Sorry about that. There is a reason I’ve dropped off the face of the earth for the last year.
That reason is HireFlo. I took all of the principles I’ve been discussing here, the techniques for creating an architecture that embraces change and can quickly adapt to massive changes to the application, and I put them into practice with my own startup. HireFlo is an Applicant Tracking System designed for the small business market. It takes all the tools that recruiters use like jobsites, aggregators, social networks, resume databases, and wraps them up in a simple app designed for small business users who probably don’t even know that most of those tools exist.
I’ve been building HireFlo for about 18 months. It’s an ASP.NET MVC app that uses AAPL for persistence, and I have to say the MVC and AAPL combination has been a huge success. I’m on version 4 of the app and I’ve made some massive changes since version 1. That’s what happens in startups, and why an architecture that embraces change but can still scale, is so incredibly important. Each time I’ve made major changes, MVC and AAPL have made the experience as quick and painless as possible.
The last major change was November 2011 when I decided to completely throw away the old UI, and rewrite a simpler, streamlined version based on a Kanban board, and also make it a single page Javascript app in the style of backbone.js and knockout.js apps. I completed the complete rewrite of every page, controller, HTML template, CSS file, and Javascript file in the app in just 14 days. This would never, never, NEVER have been possible if I’d used WebForms or a more Microsofty approach to persistence that used a bunch of sprocs and hard coded mapping logic in my data and business layers.
So anyway HireFlo is up. It’s been officially launched since August 2011 but I would say the real launch was end of December 2011 when I released version 4 of the app and the redesigned marketing site. So far there about 300 companies using it. It’s a start.
What’s coming next
So the first thing I need to do is write Part 2 of my last post. This part details how to take a helper method and turn it into a strongly typed helper method by using expressions and lambdas because…. well because doing that is awesome. After that I’ve got a lot of tech problems that I’m solving for HireFlo and I’d like to share them. I just need to find some time and get back on a somewhat regular schedule. BTW, I’d also be happy to give updates on HireFlo if you’re interested. Just let me know. -rudy
Just tried signing up to a HireFlo trial.. couldn't even get past the startup screen because yout registration page not only ignores outside the USA but seems to imply you explicitly don't WANT any registrants from abroad. For a 'version 4' app, it's a big shame if it's not a conscious decision... and if it is, maybe put something to the tune of "only open to USA residents" on the signup page so you're not wasting anyone's time.
ReplyDeleteHi Ferret, Sorry for the confusion. You are quite right, HireFlo is open only to companies in the United States and some clarification on the signup page might be in order.
ReplyDeleteIs this a Trello copy ? Or is Trello a copy of HireFlo ? The user interface is almost identical.
ReplyDeleteIt's a Kanban style I believe.
ReplyDeleteThis is even better than NLog:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.kellermansoftware.com/p-14-net-logging-library.aspx