tag:dreamwidth.org,2010-04-27:505737The Mandelbear's Musingsmdlbearmdlbear2018-04-21T20:32:24Ztag:dreamwidth.org,2010-04-27:505737:1617265Project Planning2018-04-21T20:32:24Z2018-04-21T20:32:24Zstressedpublic0
<p> It's time to do a little planning. As you may remember from <a href="https://mdlbear.dreamwidth.org/1616782.html">the previous post in
this series</a>, there are some projects I want to work on. (I also
<em>need</em> to find a job, but that's a not completely separate issue.
If anyone needs an expert Java programmer or a git expert, let me know.)
The ones I want to concentrate on today are the apps, specifically the
<strong>checklist</strong> app and the <strong>setlist</strong> app. The
first major decision about each of them is which framework to base them
on.
<p> I really want to learn both <a href="https://reactjs.org/">React</a>
(with <a href="https://facebook.github.io/react-native/">React Native</a>
on the back end), and <a href="http://elm-lang.org/">Elm</a> (with <a href="https://github.com/electron/electron">Electron</a> on the back
end), and I think it makes the most sense to write -- or at least start --
the checklist app first, and use React for it.
<h3>Here's my reasoning:</h3>
<ol>
<li> <strong>React: </strong> React is by far the more popular of the two
frameworks, so a lot of jobs ask for React experience. One reason it's
more popular is that it's basically just a Javascript library --
programs look like Javascript with a little bit of HTML and HTML-like
tags embedded in it. It's easy to learn (not that that's really a
problem for me -- see below), and there are a lot of starter kits and
tutorials around.
<li> <strong>Checklist app:</strong> It's pretty clear that the Checklist
app will have a much wider audience, so it makes sense to do that
first. It will also be easier to monetize (possibly as a freemium app,
with the free version stand-alone and the premium version tied to a
back-end service).
<li> The <strong>Setlist</strong> app, which includes a lyrics viewer and
playlist generator as well, is likely to start out using my rather
unusual music toolchain, and would actually be more useful (and get
a lot more traffic) as a front end to the <a href="https://lookingglassfolk.com/">lookingglassfolk.com</a> and <a href="https://steve.savitzky.net/">steve.savitzky.net</a> Song pages.
It makes sense for it to start out as part of a website rather than as
a stand-alone app.
<li> <strong>Elm</strong> is a pure functional language (I <em>love</em>
functional languages, which is why it would be easy for me) that is
closer to Haskell than to Javascript.
</li></li></li></li></ol>
<h3>Next steps:</h3>
<ol>
<li> Make a place in my working tree for projects. Try not to give in to
the temptation to completely refactor the whole hierarchy.
<li> Pull down and install a <a href="https://reactjs.org/community/starter-kits.html">React starter
kit</a> and some kind of Elm starter kit.
<li> Set up the projects' git repos and working trees.
</li></li></li></ol></p></p><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=mdlbear&ditemid=1617265" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments