My last post was a test post. I thought I would come back and write something once in a while. That never happened. But I have a lot to share, and today I have time.

TL;DR This is what I was up to during my spring break 2017 at Stanford:
https://medium.com/@anik_266/building-my-first-web-app-from-scratch-52ae5f34ff50

I have been away for the past several months, away in a sense ‘away from side projects, write-ups, photography and other experiments’ — things I usually love doing. I was busy with classes and problem sets and projects instead. It’s very easy to lose yourself into academics. The first week of the year; the first class project; the first guest lecture; the first quarter. Second week, second quarter, more problem sets, more activities. You fall into the pattern, or maybe the pattern gets you. That’s the limbo I was in. I had one shot to get back at writing during the month long vacation in December. But having no deadlines and homework for a while was too important a luxury and I spent my winter break having fun. Things have gotten better lately, and productive. This past quarter I took CS142 and though the class was very basic, it led me into the realms of web applications. This post is going to be all about that. (boring? stop reading…)

College, for me, has always been full of ideas. Some are shitty ideas; some are good enough to be worked on. But I never had the required know-how and enough skills to turn those ideas into reality. I understand OOP, functions and loops and can read the documentations. Heck I have made websites using templates and themes and have modified their existing code to suit my needs. They’ve worked out well. However, starting a solo project from nothing but a blank screen is a very different experience — one that I did not have until last week. And every single day since last week has been its own exciting adventure.

So what is it that I worked on?

This: BNKS Urban Dictionary – my first ever web app which I was able to build from scratch. I did it over my Spring Break where it cost me over 5000 lines of code and a bunch of sleepless nights. The app is like Urban Dictionary but for BNKS (my alma mater) which allows people to define and share words that are specific to the school’s daily life. The idea came while I was working on my CS142’s final project right before the Spring Break. I was bored by how little the return on investment was. I must have written 2000 lines of code for the final project and yet after the finals was over, it was clear that there would be nothing left of it. Localhost is, after all, just local.

I had already decided to stay back at Stanford during the break so I thought maybe I could use some of my code from that project and build an entirely different thing that I can perhaps launch and have it up there on the internet (forever?). At that time it still seemed like an unreachable goal, considering that I tend to relax during breaks. But once I started working on it, I was hooked! I knew I had to complete it. Looking backwards I think it was the idea that kept me going, not the code. If the project is still online, you can notice that it is a simple app. However since it was my first time, there were many interesting challenges along the way. I had a great time trying to piece things together.

My goal was to build something from scratch — anything that is interesting — interesting enough to keep me hooked so that I would not get bored midway and hopefully lead the project to completion. I feel fortunate that such an interesting idea came to me right in time and I am so glad I persevered. There were times where I was stuck for hours. I could have given up and walked away. But this idea was contagious; I couldn’t see it vanish like the others that had come before. That has made all the difference. I’m already thinking about my next project…