Randomals

Randomals was an app that I built during the time when i was initially learning React, it is a very simplistic app with no back-end whatsoever. The reason I decided not to use a back-end was that I wanted to focus on React alone, and not have anything else that might distract me from my main goal, Also, the app I had planned was relatively simple and adding a full back end seemed overkill.

The idea behind Randomals was to build an app where people could create and customize animals and then like these randomals. The randomals had a count of how many likes they had gotten on them. I only had a week to learn React alongside normal work so I decided to see how far I could get feature-wise in that timespan. I had gotten this idea after seeing Cryptokitties, an app that allows you to create, trade and breed cats whose features are based on a cryptographic sequence.

At first, I found React to be extremely strange to use, why won’t my text input just take the text I’m giving it? But soon, it all began to click into place, the immutable nature of React, the way components use props to pass data up and down through components, it was all making sense. The learning curve was quite easy, much easier than the Angular 1 curve when I learned that, and I was having fun, which was the biggest suprise for me, I’ve always enjoyed coding, but I’ve never been this excited to work on something before. The closest I’d got to this feeling in the past was when I learned Go, and couldn’t wipe the smile off my face for the rest of the day.

In conclusion, I’m glad I decided to learn React, it was an extremely fun to work with once I understood how it worked and I felt happy to bring it to my company and pitch for its trail on further projects.

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