How I'm Making My First Full Stack App

Hey all! So glad you’ve found your way to this week’s version of Launch Letter.

In last weeks edition, I expressed my desire to “hit the ground running” after returning from study abroad, but the actual result was more of an uncoordinated stumble. This past week has had a lot more relaxing than working, and I’ve had to figure out how to navigate that balance going forward.

With internship application season quickly approaching, I want to use these last 6 weeks of summer to maximize my skills and improve my resume. One of the steps to accomplish that is developing my first full stack web app.

In this weeks edition, I’ll go over how (and why) I’m developing it, and some tips that might help you kickstart your productivity this summer too.

First, Use Structure To Conquer Mental Distractions

Before I get into the app itself, I want to briefly mention how I prioritize what I give my time to. Like I mentioned, my transition into working after returning from study abroad wasn’t the smoothest.

When you don’t reach a goal, especially with building, it can be easy to get down on yourself. I’m no different. I put a lot of pressure on myself to be productive. To combat that, I’ve made a system that helps eliminate guilt from the equation.

The above picture is a screenshot of my Workflowy, where I keep all of my notes and tasks. At the top of the page, I always have my overarching goals, and then my priorities for whatever stage of life I’m currently at. This way, when I face a dilemma over what to dedicate my time to, the decision is already made.

Building, as much as I love it, is not my first priority in my life. Doing well in school and spending time with loved ones ultimately take precedent.

I implore you to give this goal hierarchy thing a try! It has greatly improved the clarity and focus in my life, and maybe it can for you too. Now lets talk about the work I did get done this week.

Making A Virtual Space For Far Away Loved Ones

One of the hardest things I had to deal with through my first year at college was maintaining relationships with people back home. Whether it be a significant other, family members, or friends, keeping up can be difficult.

So, I came up with the idea of a cozy online space that loved ones can hang out in when they’re apart.

As you can see above, the app isn’t exactly mind blowing in its current state. Right now all you can really do is login, text, and jump around. But, the possibilities are pretty much endless for these colorful little stick figures.

Some current ideas are:

1. Building or decorating a house together.

2. Mario Party type mini-games.

3. Leaving notes for other players when they log back on.

4. Taking care of pets or animals.

The goal is to have a welcoming, and relaxing place to spend time and goof around in. Let me know what you think of this list, and if there are any other features you think would fit that description.

But Why This Project

At first glance, this project doesn’t really fit my usual set of interests here on Launch Letter. It doesn’t really provide any monetary or business utility for anyone and is really just a fun thing to play around with.

But, what this project does do, is check a lot of boxes for what potential employers might want to see on my resume in the fall. First up, I’m using a lot of common technologies to get this thing working:

React for the frontend (hosted on Netlify).
Express for the backend (hosted on Render).
MongoDB for the database.

All of these are very important to know if I want to be a software developer.

Secondly, the project is complex. The first version, which I started 2 weeks ago, was setup so poorly that I pretty much had to restart. Working on a full stack app forces you to implement efficient and elegant solutions. If you don’t think two steps ahead, the project crumbles underneath itself.

Third, and finally, its nice to work on something just for fun. This project pertains to my life and gives me a lot of freedom to implement silly features just because.

I’m really excited about the future of this project, and if you are too, I’ll be sharing updates both here and on my Twitter. That’s all for this week, I hope you enjoyed and I’ll see you next time!

What feature should I build next?

Reply and let me hear about it, I’d love to put it into the virtual world!

Till next time,

-Kirby