July was a huge success. I’m quite excited about things. I’ve moved to a GraphQL structure. This will reduce latency and network transfer volume. Many types are now exposed, including user information, games data and metadata, and challenges. I’m slowly adding the mutators. You can currently create/modify profiles and issue and respond to challenges. There’s some back end stuff happening too (game pinging and status updates). As mentioned last month, an open games API (so that others can code games independently of my code base) is really important to me.

Short month for me because I have to do some travelling for work, but I did get some stuff done. Got the database issues worked out, so profile creation is fully working. The way AWS lambdas and databases talk to each other imposes some limitations I did not expect. But the openness of the games API that I have designed is really important to me. I’m not giving up on that.

Had some days off over the long weekend. I had some motivation issues, but ultimately I got a fair bit done. I am just continually reminded how much I hate front-end development. JavaScript is such a hideous language! And the front-end space is just always moving forward and breaking things. After this weekend’s frustrations, I’ve decided to leave the front end for a while yet. I’ll focus on the API and get that working first.

So no updates in a while. All I can do is apologize. This is still a project I’m excited about, but life has been challenging on many fronts, so one must prioritize. In some ways, it’s a good thing, because in the meantime a couple things have happened: The GDPR entered the picture and changed, well, everything. I would have had to refactor quite a bit of code to comply.

July was pretty rough personally, but I did manage to get a little development time in. Here’s what happened: GraphQL appears to be the future, so I created a new endpoint (/query) that will support it. It will actually make writing the front end simpler and less resource intensive. It’s only basic support for now, meaning no mutations or authentication, but it works. A few other low-level things. Check out the GitHub repos for details

I got three development days in since the last update and actually made some meaningful progress. My biggest conquest was figuring out how to translate the front end. If you go there you will see a language switcher next to the login button. Changing that translates all the visible text! Magic! (Note that the authentication stuff won’t work because the back-end server is only online while I’m working on it.)

Two words: development hell. For a sense of what it feels like to write even moderately complex front-end code, read this Medium post. I love talking to computers. I love figuring out how to make them do my bidding, but I’m not a fan of the scaffolding required to get to the stuff you actually care about (e.g., actually coding freaking games). This is one reason I love short coding challenges like Project Euler and CodinGame.

I’m finally back on the development train. I have a few banked days, so I’ll keep plugging along. I made some more progress on the login code. This is one of the more complicated systems, and of course it’s essential, so that’s why it’s taking some time to fully develop. Also, though, front-end web development is hard :) JavaScript is a very, very messy language. I’m dealing with libraries using three different syntax versions that only work because of the magic of Babel polyfills, so my brain hurts more than a little after a session.

You’ll notice there hasn’t been an update in a couple of months. Don’t worry. I’m not fading. We’re shorthanded at work, so things have been very busy. I’ve banked a few development days that I hope to use shortly. I’m also taking some time off this month, so I may even be able to do some development then, too. I just wanted to let you know that things are still happening.

This summer has been frustrating, development wise. Work has been crazy busy, and I’m not slacking off at home either! So I’ve had minimal coding time again. I’m really hoping things open up a little in the fall, and I’m looking forward to some serious progress over winter vacation. Result’s for the day’s coding? I finally have front-end authentication working, so that’s a big win. Baby steps! Please visit the Super Duper Games Google Group if you have questions or suggestions.