simeon

simeon, 11 months ago (edited 11 months ago) to random

I'm building a web thing to scratch my own itch/need and it's the best thing ever to see it slowly and steadily take shape.

Because I know exactly what I need I can keep it small and extremely focussed. There's very little research/planning overhead and I can oftentimes make meaningful progress in as little as 30 minutes.

I've also decided to continue making it if and only if I actually end up using it in my daily life.

Hope to find that out soon: I'm 90% done with the minimal usable idea.

simeon, 10 months ago to random

OK folks, Mastodon can't do polls with attachments so we'll do this the old-fashioned way.

Do you prefer this helpful onboarding/welcome text to sit in the middle, or on the left of the page?

Screenshot of a meal planning app showing a welcome text placed on the left the page as aligning stuff with the center is a cardinal sin in UX/UI.

simeon, 10 months ago to random

@siddhantgoel My biggest Mastodon tip is to follow a lot (and I mean a lot) of people and hashtags. Mastodon doesn't have an algorithm that pushes (unwanted) content your way so you'll have to do that in the beginning.

Start by following anything and everything that looks (mildly) interesting. Soon you're timeline will be full of interesting and less interesting things. Simply unfollow the latter to keep your stream relevant.

Finding hashtags to follow is easier than finding people 1/n

simeon, 10 months ago to random

There’s nothing like a job interview rejection to kindle your passion for your side-project. 😅

simeon, 8 months ago to random

Over the weekend I realised that I've slightly over-engineered my app.

I'm pondering whether to simplify it (and take the delay/progress hit), or leave it as is.

Right now, you can tell the app on which weekdays to plan meals for you.

It turns out that, surprise!, life is chaotic.

Things happen, plans change and you decide to cook something else. Or nothing at all.

Constraining meals to specific days doesn't match Reality™.

I could nuke this feature… 1/2

#BuildInPublic

simeon, 10 months ago to django

Hey #Django hive mind: suppose you have a model that you always need to filter by e.g. a team. Do you

A) create a custom Manager (e.g. for_team) and call Model.for_team(team).all() to get the team's objects

B) explicitly filter by team on every call i.e. Model.objects.filter(team=team)

C) leverage roles, groups and permissions (if at all possible) to get the team's objects?

I like B) as it's explicit and easier to setup. Adding more filters, however, wil make it verbose.

simeon, 11 months ago to random

I very much su... am learning to UX/UI.

At this stage, I can make an interface look orderly in grey, using a component library.

I'd very much like to level up to designing appealing interfaces (in grey) by adding a dash of color.

It's sometimes tough to plough through one's grey-ish landscape when living in the shiny iOS forest where everything is polished and moves smoothly in and out of view.

Luckily, my skills can only improve thus the path is clear.

simeon, 10 months ago to random

Experimenting with some meme-driven user #onboarding. 😆

What do we think #BuildingInPublic? Keep or toss it in the bin?

simeon, 6 months ago to random

Big day today: I onboarded my first user to my side project.

Welcome mom! 🙃

The app is still very very rough but I'm dying to learn if it has real utility.

We bulldozed through a bunch of bugs together and managed to land on the home screen. 😊

And now... we wait.

I brought it as far as I can on my own. It has to click with other people now to make it worth pursuing.

#BuildInPublic

simeon, 10 months ago to random

"This is my meal panning app. There are many like it, but this one is mine."

Yes, I'm working on a YAMPA: yet another meal planning app.

It aims to streamline and calm the weekly meal prep of ambitious* people, couples and families who strive for a healthy and varied diet in the midst of the weekly grind.

It helps you plan, shop for and rotate the couple of go-to meals that you** cook every week.

The goal: reduce weekly stress, increase weekend culinary exploration.

*stressed
**me

1/3

image/jpeg
image/jpeg
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simeon, 8 months ago to python

#Python circular imports are the bane of my existence.

simeon, 8 months ago to random

@ivory Hello, I recently discovered the Ivory (macOS) keyboard shortcuts and my quality of Mastodon life skyrocketed!

I noticed that hitting Cmd + n opens the Compose window but doesn't focus it.

Is this a bug or a feature? 🙃

simeon, 10 months ago to random

“You can make it purple!”

How’s that for an USP?

simeon, 10 months ago to random

I just realized I’ve made a data modelling mistake that will require refactoring half the app… hehe.

TIL that you should be very careful when deciding to nullify a foreign key instead of cascading the deletion of the referenced object.

I thought I’d “fix” the issue by manually deleting stuff but then my previous CouchDB life flashed before my eyes and I remembered all the database related logic intermixed with the business logic and went “Nah, naaah! It’s refactoring time!”

simeon, 10 months ago to random

Raise your hand if you can forgive your parents for parts of your upbringing now that you are a parent yourself. 🙋🏻‍♂️

simeon, 1 month ago to random

To LazyVim, or not… that is the question.

I currently use PyCharm exclusively and it’s great, but I’d like to streamline my DX by ditching the mouse.

I’ve configured a bunch of keyboard shortcuts in PyCharm but some things can’t be controlled with keystrokes.

OTOH, going full-blown terminal will take time, effort and a temporary dip in DX.

simeon, 11 months ago to random

@thorgal Hey, just wanted to say that I love https://welcometomygarden.org, https://www.slowby.travel and the grander slow travel idea!

I and the family love hiking, (long distance) cycling and camping. The kids are finally(!) old enough to ride their own fully-loaded bikes and it's the best/cutest thing ever.

You and the team are doing good and necessary work. We need more bikes/slow travel out there, keep it up!

simeon, 1 year ago to programming

https://pynecone.io is a #Python framework for building web apps without writing any HTML/CSS.

Define a Python function to create a page and call a bunch of functions to add layout strategies and components.

Add the page to your app, set a route and you're ready to build/export it as a static site or a Docker container.

This looks like a super clean way to assemble apps.

The question is though, as with any abstraction/high-level approach, where does it leak?

simeon, 4 days ago (edited 4 days ago) to random

It took me a gazzilion hours and only 3.48 gray hairs but…

… I’ve an About section (on the Settings page 😅) in my meal planning app.

Also: I just completed 99% of my landing page.🥳

Felt proud, might delete later.
#BuildInPublic

simeon, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago) to random

I’ve started experimenting with #whittling #WoodCarving. This is my second attempt. It’s extremely basic, yet oddly satisfying.

simeon, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago) to random

AI moves fast and breaks the web.

“…on Patreon for subs because of how disgusted I am that the work I've done will be used in Google's AI training and search results without my consent. It is a very frustrating situation to be placed in.”

https://mastodon.social/@AbandonedAmerica/110659582025856682

simeon, 11 months ago to random

I'm building a small personal web app and am trying to keep it as simple and focussed as possible.

The other day I took it for a spin in the Real World™ and it was immediately crushed by reality: I had to write the stuff it's supposed to help me manage on a piece of paper.

"Great! You know how to proceed."

True!

Also: fixing that means adding complexity and expanding the scope which I'm trying to avoid.

I therefore ask: is this scope creep or problem space exploration?

simeon, 8 months ago to random

First dev day after the summer holiday -> update project dependencies.

simeon, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago) to random

When developing an app, do you strive for

simeon, 10 months ago to django

Decided to be a grown-up for a change and gave myself 30 minutes to research third-party #Django object-level authorization packages.

I fired up djangopackages.org and found oso-django, rules and django-guardian.

They all look promising but complicated.

I'm again wondering whether to keep things simple by using filters/custom QuerySets and Managers as advised earlier or bite the bullet and learn and implement a third-party package.