I Have No Idea What I'm Doing

OK, this one’s a random thought. It’s about project structure. Or order of operations. Or something like that.

Anyway – how do you approach a new project? I always tend to work the same way: start with the data.

What kind of data will you need to use? How do you need to handle it?

That tends to drive my development in a specific direction:

1. Set up a place to store the data.
2. Build the structures to store the data.
3. Build the methods you need to access / update / handle the data.
4. Make sure the data can move the way you want. You know, teach it how to Dougie.
5. Last, package it up in some kind of interface. Bonus points for good UX.

Is it effective? Heck yeah. Does it mean that you might go a long time without much to visually demonstrate on a project? Also yes.

Like, you can show off backend unit tests, or test your API routes in Postman or whatever, but it’s not exciting. “Ooh, look, I got back some text data in curly braces!”

So this Jam Session capstone project is interesting, because my team works the other way around. Put together the UI first so there’s something to show off, and worry about the data later.

I get it, and it’s a valid way to work. There’s just a part of me that hates touching code more than once. Like, get it done and send it off into the world. So if you start with the backend, you can have that DONE and just… never touch it again while you iron out the front end, secure in the knowledge that the backend server is just humming along.

But if you start with the frontend, it will never be done. You’ll have to keep going back to it and revising it as you add layers to the data handling and routes, pulling out all your mocked-up components and replacing them with the real thing. So you wind up working on the frontend, but then you keep working on the frontend while you also need to work on the backend logic.

Anyway, just some ramblings for today.

OK, so there’s not much going on in ProjectLand… yet. This week is “get the basic framework set up and ready for development”, and I don’t think anyone really wants to read about Google Firestore vs. AWS whatever. So that leaves us at a crossroads – what DO we talk about?

Panic! of the Tech Bros?

Woo! More layoffs! Will I have a job at the end of this whole degree process? I don’t know. Theoretically I have an offer from one of those big companies, but my start date has been pushed out to October already, so…

OK, that’s a downer. Let’s try something else.

Read Any Good Books?

Uh, does Beej’s Guide to Network Programming count? No?

Well, that topic is no fun either. Let’s try something completely different.

Nerdy-*** Voice Actors

OK, so there IS big news in Critical Role land. (This pertains to me because I am A Fan.)

For those not in the know, Critical Role is a bunch of voice actors that play Dungeons & Dragons and stream their games on Twitch. They’re pretty popular. As in, one of Twitch’s highest revenue-generating channels.

So a while back they wanted to do a one-off animated special, so they put up a Kickstarter. Instead of a few thousand dollars they raised $11.3 million and broke some records in the process. So they decided to make an entire ten-episode animated series.

Then Amazon entered the chat, picked up the rights to stream the series, and paid for a full second season to the tune of many more millions of dollars.

This was all back in 2019. Season 2 of “The Legend of Vox Machina” hit Prime Video last week. Which brings us to yesterday, when Amazon announced Oops, we did it again – they’re developing another animated series based on Critical Role’s second campaign, and grabbed exclusive first-dibs rights to all of Critical Role’s IP for TV and film.

So this should be fun – I’ve been watching Critical Role’s ridiculous streams since 2015 or so, and in that time they have generated a mind-boggling 1,400 hours of content (eat your heart out, One Piece fans…)

I wonder if Prime Video is hiring?