Simply, to document building this: Cookbook repo on Github, but hear me out, if you want…

It was April, 2013.

I was a few weeks into a frontend programming program (The Iron Yard) when I sketched some app screens that would become my class project. I got this far (Batchmaker repo on Github) on the project with help from classmates and the instructor.

Not bad, right?

After the program ran its course, and I started working for money. It’s easier to make money as a beginner writing HTML & CSS so I did that. The work was available, I enjoyed it, and I wanted to get be better at it. I needed to focus on doing just that so I chose to put Batchmaker down.

Batchmaker is a a first love of mine–it’s weird, sure. The idea wasn’t mine, but I latched onto it. I drew the wireframes and the class constructed the design all together. It was a lot of fun and I was looking forward to watching my wife (and my mom) use the app. I spent a lot of time getting maybe a third there before quitting. I feel like I let some people down by not finishing, but mostly myself. I don’t regret the work I’ve done the last 2 years–it’s been a really amazing journey. I’m pretty damn good at writing HTML, CSS, and JS. I do it a lot. Like all day everyday. It’s satisfying, but nothing produces quite the same gratification as making data show up on the page. It’s just really cool to me. Probably mundane to many at this point, but I’m just 2 years into the game and the stuff is still just cool.

Anyway, I think of Batchmaker a few times a month, still. I’m feeling motivated and the time is feeling a lot like ‘now’ to get back on the horse.

Actually, I’m starting over. I didn’t even use the name “Batchmaker” in my new repo. The old repo is open-sourced by TIY–I just figured it easiest to start fresh. That old repo hasn’t been touched in 660 days at the time I wrote this. I’m sure the markup and CSS sucks, and I’m sure I didn’t document or use comments in my Javascript so what’s the point? I’m doing this because I want to, but also because I need to level up my programming rep. I’ve been doing so much frontend design that I don’t even feel close to being able to call myself a programmer. Don’t mean to step on toes–I think you now what I mean.

Finally, I’ve given myself 3 months to get a prototype working (June 1 - August 31). I will be successful if, with the app, a user can:

• Create an account/log in
• Edit their profile
• Create a recipe
• Open the recipe(s) individually
• Edit the recipe(s)
• Delete the recipe(s)

Anything more will be icing. I’m going to try to not over-design and get slowed down in that area along the way but I probably will.

Your basic CRUD app, right? We’ll see. I don’t know what JS framework I will use. I don’t know what backend engine I’ll run it on. Right now I’m just looking over 2 year old designs and making one page at time. After that I’ll have chosen a framework and begin integrated the new markup into that system.

I’ll be recording successes and failures alike. I’m really looking forward to the next few months. Again, here’s the repo for ‘cookbook-app’ (my wife helped me choose that codename). Also, here’s the repo for this little Jekyll site, in case I made a typo or something and you’re the kind that likes to help.