Project Planning

Sat, 21 Apr 2018 20:32:24 GMT

It's time to do a little planning. As you may remember from the previous post in this series, there are some projects I want to work on. (I also need 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 checklist app and the setlist app. The first major decision about each of them is which framework to base them on.

I really want to learn both React (with React Native on the back end), and Elm (with Electron 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.

Here's my reasoning:

React: 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.
Checklist app: 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).
The Setlist 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 lookingglassfolk.com and steve.savitzky.net Song pages. It makes sense for it to start out as part of a website rather than as a stand-alone app.
Elm is a pure functional language (I love functional languages, which is why it would be easy for me) that is closer to Haskell than to Javascript.

Next steps:

Make a place in my working tree for projects. Try not to give in to the temptation to completely refactor the whole hierarchy.
Pull down and install a React starter kit and some kind of Elm starter kit.
Set up the projects' git repos and working trees.

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The Mandelbear's Musings

Project Planning

Here's my reasoning:

Next steps: