[dangrossman]

I suck at design yet I start with design. I'll make up a header and logo in Photoshop then transfer it to HTML & CSS, and at that stage block out a content area and footer. For me, doing this lets me envision the end product and get myself excited about getting to it quickly. Part of what's exciting is that I'll have something to show people at the end, so not looking like crap matters to me.

After that I figure out the data model, create whatever database is needed, open up the docs for whatever new tech I'm learning (that's usually the point of a weekend project for me), and get to coding the actual app.

This past weekend I made http://bookmarkly.com to learn Backbone.js and a bunch of other related things. It's pure JavaScript on the server and client, and I had to build a screenshot generating server for it too, which bled into the week. I'll probably post a "Show HN" after I give all the code a second pass, I'd like to open source the site.