Freedom Week #2

It's the second week since I've decided to resign from my role at Automattic. And well, time flies when you're having fun 😄

The past week, I worked on the two side projects I mentioned last week.

Endgame

In January 2020, I started a fun little project: a step counter showing how many steps you've left until you die.

I did not hit my imposed deadline of releasing a TestFlight beta version this week. I had too much fun on the other project and kind of sidetracked Endgame this week.

What I did manage to do is completely overhaul the onboarding, which looked corporate and which was tedious before, to something more fresh and less obtrusive.

Before:

After:

Other changes from this week include swapping out the HealthKit library, polishing some components (like moving the date picker inside a slide-over modal as seen above), adding support for miles, and making sure you never get 0 steps left.

I hope to have a beta ready next week and ship this fun little project before November arrives. Although, I'm afraid I'll need to remove the Adult category to get Apple to approve it 🫣

Lijsje

A mini side project I've been pondering is something that has been done numerous times before. However, none of the implementations I've tried so far have hit the mark regarding ease of use or are any faster than just using a Google Doc.

The idea is wishlist management, which is making a list of things you want for, for example, your birthday, where people can cross off items. Every website I've tried so far requires me to create an account or throws everything and the kitchen sink at the problem.

I was a JavaScript guy for the past ten years or so, but even though my title at Automattic was JavaScript engineer I think 80% of the code I wrote there was PHP. And much to my surprise ... PHP doesn't suck (anymore).

PHP has gotten a lot better in the past years, and Laravel is a big reason why. Laravel is a Swiss Army knife for building modern websites. Unlike most JavaScript frameworks that mainly just handle routing, Laravel comes fully loaded. It's got everything you'd usually need to tack onto a (for example) Next.js app to make it actually useful: ORM, Auth, task scheduling, email handling, and more.

The Lijsje project is an excuse to try out Laravel, on a problem that's simple enough not to lose myself in. I started working on it Monday afternoon, and a couple of hours later, I had a basic working prototype. Laravel really blew my mind even more than I expected.

It took me two more days to get it in a shape I deemed acceptable for an alpha version.

Nerd alert! It features:

• A WebSocket backend, to sync people checking things off a wishlist across different sessions.
• A Redis-based worker queue.
• Transactional emails through Amazon SES.
• An admin panel.
• Livewire components that handle the AJAX calls.
• A Vercel-like build system, thanks to Envoyer and Forge.

It's unreal to build such a complex system so quickly, and even more so in a framework I've not touched in a long time. Laravel is beyond amazing,

I soft-launched the alpha version of Lijsje yesterday. Please try it out (if you speak Dutch):

Lijsje - Maak en deel je wenslijsten

Maak en deel eenvoudig je wenslijsten met Lijsje. Ideaal voor verjaardagen, feestdagen en speciale gelegenheden.

Lijsje

Misc

• I bought a new record player last week, and I've been spinning the new Bright Eyes record Five Dice, All Threes like crazy. Such an amazing record, their best one since 2007's Cassadega.

• I'm trying to avoid all the drama related to my former employer, but it seems he made another alignment offer to current employees, and now they get a nine-month payout when they quit because they are not aligned. I'm glad I took the offer when it was first offered, because it felt like the right thing to do, but damn.
• I forgot to change the DNS-record of www.woordje.be to my self-hosted environment. After I canceled my Vercel Pro plan, people started getting issues. All is fixed now.
• We spent Wednesday afternoon in the sand at Bar Leon, which was a lot of fun.
• Friday was spent entirely on going to the hairdresser, buying some new clothes and shoes, charging the car, and writing this update.
• I also replaced Minne's bike's tire, which was not as challenging as I imagined it would be 😆
• I look forward to playing Super Mario Party Jamboree with the kids when they get home.