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See here for a description of what I'm doing: https://poal.co/s/technology/569412

Today I had a short day but managed to get some work done. I decided that I'm going to concentrate on modding nodebb to act a server for the messages. nodebb will give me user authentication, modding, etc. so I don't have to write it from scratch. I was considering using discourse but that server is written in ruby. I'm already learning one language, javascript, to write the client and don't want to learn some other crappy oo high level language and nodebb is also in javascript so that helps a lot.

The way to extend nodebb for this, as far as I can figure, is to write a nodebb plugin that allows me to create a special topic per url that people want comment on, and then a nodebb theme for people to access the topic within the browser extension. It seems pretty straightforward but I have to read a lot of documentation and do some experimentation to make sure it can work.

Longer term I want to make sure there is no single point of failure, so if captaindirgo.com goes down, the plugin can still operate. So, as opposed to what I was saying yesterday, I now think that I need the plugin to have some code built in to switch servers if needed. Eventually I hope to add some functionality for a true p2p messaging system, but that is down the line.

My philosophy is to something functional out quickly that does not look like ass and then expand it to be more reliable and open later on. I don't want to have it become one of those projects that have grand ideals and are in development forever, and when they finally do release, their stuff is full of bugs and looks like it was made by high school students using 90's technology. I hesitate to make a timeline but my goal is to get the first version done within a three months so that would be Dec 1st. Lets see if I can make it.

See here for a description of what I'm doing: https://poal.co/s/technology/569412 Today I had a short day but managed to get some work done. I decided that I'm going to concentrate on modding nodebb to act a server for the messages. nodebb will give me user authentication, modding, etc. so I don't have to write it from scratch. I was considering using discourse but that server is written in ruby. I'm already learning one language, javascript, to write the client and don't want to learn some other crappy oo high level language and nodebb is also in javascript so that helps a lot. The way to extend nodebb for this, as far as I can figure, is to write a nodebb plugin that allows me to create a special topic per url that people want comment on, and then a nodebb theme for people to access the topic within the browser extension. It seems pretty straightforward but I have to read a lot of documentation and do some experimentation to make sure it can work. Longer term I want to make sure there is no single point of failure, so if captaindirgo.com goes down, the plugin can still operate. So, as opposed to what I was saying yesterday, I now think that I need the plugin to have some code built in to switch servers if needed. Eventually I hope to add some functionality for a true p2p messaging system, but that is down the line. My philosophy is to something functional out quickly that does not look like ass and then expand it to be more reliable and open later on. I don't want to have it become one of those projects that have grand ideals and are in development forever, and when they finally do release, their stuff is full of bugs and looks like it was made by high school students using 90's technology. I hesitate to make a timeline but my goal is to get the first version done within a three months so that would be Dec 1st. Lets see if I can make it.

(post is archived)

[–] • 1 pt (edited )

I'm already learning one language, javascript

I don't know how much you know yet but since your new to js programming have you heard of TypeScript? It allows js to be relatively strictly typed. Vanilla js is fine for very very small projects but at some point, when a project gets more complex, js without types get pretty unmanagable. I personally would never create a new project without TypeScript, but if new to it it might slow development in the beginning so I dunno.

[–] • 1 pt

Thanks. Yea, I heard of typescript but never tried it out. I did js a long time ago, but the apis are all different now and I never have been exposed to browser extension programming.

I think for now I just got to figure out how it all works before tacking on more layers of complexity. The code itself for the first version is probably going to be pretty straightforward and short so it makes sense to just bang it out.

Once I get it done, then moving on to more involved stuff where I actually have to code some real logic, then I think TypeScript or something else makes sense. I really like dependent types, and was thinking about using Idris which can compile to js, but that may hinder the project since most people aren't familiar with Idris and learning it can be a rabbit hole in itself.