itay

Hey HN,

I wanted to share with you what I've been working on for the past few months – the Splunk Developer Platform[1]. We released our Python SDK[2] back in August, but just last week we released our Java[3] and JavaScript[4] ones, and the JS SDK was the one I've been working on.

It was a great learning experience for me – first real foray into JavaScript and Node (the SDK works in both the browser and Node), and was a lot of fun to try different things out releasing it. I ended up building on a couple of open source libraries (and contributing back).

We are building out Splunk's developer platform and do a lot of work with social data like Twitter, Foursquare and GitHub, as well as try and come up with new ideas about how to use Splunk. If anyone has any questions or wants to try Splunk out, just let me know (contact info is in my profile).

[1]: http://dev.splunk.com

[2]: https://github.com/splunk/splunk-sdk-python

[3]: https://github.com/splunk/splunk-sdk-java

[4]: https://github.com/splunk/splunk-sdk-javascript

I'm thinking about registering an .re domain, but the residency requirements seem to state:

Registration open to legal persons (whose headquarters is located on the Ile de la Reunion, or have an address on the Ile de la Reunion) and individuals (of French nationality residing on the Island Meeting of foreign nationality or whose habitual residence is located on the Ile de la Reunion) and holders of a trademark. The administrative contact must reside in France.

There are registrars out there who "find" someone who fits the requirements. I'm wondering if people here have ever used services like this, or what you've done to get these kinds of domains.

Thanks!

I've recently been thinking that I could benefit from a technical mentor.

I'm a technical person by nature, and work as a software engineer as my job. My expertise is on the lower- level side of things, mainly involving operating systems. While I have plenty of "mentorship" day-to-day from people I respect and admire, on my personal projects (or projects I hope to turn into ventures), which have nothing to do with what I do for my employer, I feel I'm lacking.

I'll give an example to illustrate. A few months back I wrote a small project in django, because I was curious about server-side development, and wanted to try django out. It worked out fairly well, and I have no problem figuring out how to get what I want done for the most part. But I always have this nagging feeling that I could do it better, that there is a better way. Now, I'll happily concede that practice makes perfect, and I do more web development, I'll get better at it and figure out the better way. But I feel that by having a mentor I can expand my horizons and learn from someone else's experience, which I think is invaluable.

In the above example, I would talk to my mentor about how it's best to model the functionality in the database, and best ways to implement some functionality, etc. I would do all the coding, they would be a "wise and experienced sounding board".

Basically, I don't see "learning by doing" and "learning through mentorship" to be mutually exclusive, and both can happen at the same time.

So what am I looking for? Someone whose technical skills are complementary to my own (mainly looking for people with python/django experience and iphone/objc experience, the areas I'm trying to grow in), and who is willing to be the "wise and experienced sounding board".

My question to HN is two-fold: a. What's a good way to find such a person? The problem is that most of my technical friends/coworkers have a skill set very similar to my own (or in areas which are not that interesting to me). So I have to look outside my usual circle, hence asking for advice of where to look. b. If there happens to be anyone reading this who is interested, that would be great too :)

A fair question that I feel may come up is what does the mentor get in return. I don't have a good answer, which is why I've been mulling for a few days whether to post this or not. The short answer is "not much", beyond the satisfaction of seeing someone grow and having a willing student (things I've enjoyed very much when I'm on the other side of the mentor/mentee relationship), as well as a friend. And obviously, if there is something that's reasonable to do in return, I'm always open to suggestions.

Thanks in advance, and looking forward to your thoughts!

This is my first submission ever to HN - I mostly read (avidly) and vote (sparingly). I've been in the position for the past while where I have wanted to start on a project, or have even started, but always get bogged down when it comes to the design phase of it, due to my lack of design skills. Sometimes these projects are websites, or simple applications, but my skills in this area are basically non-existent.

Now, if I was looking to co-found something, I can see embarking on a more serious search. Yet for things you just want to toy around with and try out and see if they lead anywhere it's not as appropriate. This is exarcebated by the fact that all my friends are developers like me, so it's not hard for me to find development partners, just design ones.

So my question to all of you is this: say you have some project you want to try it out, or just experiment with something: how do you go about finding someone to work with when you don't know anyone with that skill set to begin with?

As a sort of "P.S.", if there are any designers looking to try things out, feel free to contact me.