The 48 Hour Application: The Start
Today I start the 48 Hour Application. A project idea, and a time-limited application.
You may wonder why I am tightening the deadlines, rather than extending them. Tight deadlines can mean a mismanaged project. Tight deadlines could mean that somewhere along the line either a task took too long, or the project wasn’t scoped properly. Or maybe a project has been forced to launch. Most developers hate deploying sub-standard work, and most would rather be working on a well managed and well delivered project. In theory it sounds marvellous.
I find myself with some free-time. Another project I am working on is waiting for the next piece of the puzzle, and I am not able to deliver that. With some time up my sleeve, I am going to tackle a small project idea I have, in an effort to building something I have use of on another three projects. I have shortened the deadline to keep myself motivated, and to build a minimal viable product that I can use.
The aim is not for it to be production ready, and releasable to the public. The aim is to build the bones for an application I am able to use – a functional tool. Something simple.
What I want to Build
A few projects I have been working on lately require a blog of some kind. These projects have been in different languages, from Ruby, PHP or Javascript, and while I could write code to facilitate a basic blog, or install packages to handle each of these, I feel like I could cover all of these bases with a micro service.
The idea of a Headless CMS has gathered momentum in the past. I know that this idea has been done already, and you can sign up and start using it today. Ultimately, I am not going to spend $99 a month to host the content for a few blogs, on systems that I am building along side, so I will build a system that handles the content – and allow myself to focus on application specific logic in my projects.
By early Monday morning – 48hours from when I start – I want to have the first version of the the system completed, and some content posted and ready to display on the first site that needs a blog – Antelope Studios. That is the goal – the changes and iterations that happen after the first version is deployed, will be followed up on my blog as well.
The service will be initially used in my projects, and I’ll see how expanding the system goes if there is any interest. So my MVP will be Minimally Viable for my personal use, and possible expanded into a Product if there is interest.
Embrace the Unicorn
This challenge has the potential to fail, or to release a broken system – that is fine by me. The end goal is to build and deploy an MVP within a small time frame. The end product will be usable on another of my websites, hopefully on Monday. To show the new application is live, I will interact with another of my websites. I will not be releasing the source code (at this stage).
I think am going to stick to tools and frameworks I know, so that I can keep up the speed of which I am working. But, I will be thinking about what I need when I get to the point. I shall start with Symfony (a PHP Framework). But will be thinking of choices for databases and a front-end javascript framework along the way.
I’m going to get started
I am going to post step-by-step photos and thoughts on a tumblr account. Head on over and see what I am up to.
(Photo taken by Ales Krivec)
