I have some really big personal news...I've totally redone my fashion game! 
Most of you had no idea that I developed an online fashion game that's been around since 2008.
The web was a much different time back then and as the years went on, my app became more dated with each passing year.
The web was a much different time back then and as the years went on, my app became more dated with each passing year.
Frontend was a lot simpler back then. You didn't need much JavaScript at all. Good ole HTML, a sprinkle of CSS, and you were off and running!
However, my players have been begging me for a more modern layout, one that doesn't require a bunch of page refreshes for every single action lol. They've actually been begging me for yearsss.
So, year after year, it's been a goal of mine to redevelop my game. But there were many obstacles holding me back...
1️⃣ I developed this game when I was a lot younger. I had a bunch of free time on my hands back then, so I was able to dedicate a lot of it to this side project.
So much so that I constantly added features to the game for about 8 years straight. This meant refactoring 8 years of work.
2️⃣ I'm at a much different point in my life and career. I don't have a lot of free time at all, and what I do have, I don't want to spend much of on development side projects.
3️⃣ I'm a backend girl. For the very first version of the game, I had a frontend person create all of the HTML and CSS.
But I knew enough of both to be able to build new features of my app over the years doing the full stack development alone.
But I knew enough of both to be able to build new features of my app over the years doing the full stack development alone.
But for this redo, I was also going to have to become quite comfy with JavaScript. And CSS was becoming pretty fancy as well, and it became more common to open web apps on all kinds of devices.
4️⃣ Agile development also had been gaining popularity. But how does this apply to a redesign? My MVP is the whole game! There are active players. I couldn't just rip features from them and give them a percentage of the game instead!
So year after year, I would plan to finally accomplish this. With the weight of all of these obstacles on my shoulders, and year after year I would fail to reach my goal.
It's not that I didn't try. Each year, I tried to start. But the technologies were changing so fast! As someone who was only doing this as a side project, I couldn't keep up!
By the time I would start dabbling into learning a framework, said framework would be declared uncool by the industry.
So I kept starting over... learning some new framework, only to have it dismissed by time I was ready to build with it.
Things settled down a bit in the frontend world a couple of years ago, and it finally felt safe to commit to a framework. I took a React course. I realized this was pretty complicated.
Again I didn't have time for all of this. I didn't have enough spare time to struggle with learning that new framework and actually spending time doing all of this redo work.
So I blew it off again... for a couple of more years.
So I blew it off again... for a couple of more years.
But a couple of really inspiring things happened last year (I'll get to those in a minute) that pushed me to finally just DO THE WORK!
So, I've recently been spending all of my spare time heads down, rebuilding my game...and now I can finally say I have! 🎉
I had to revisit that MVP thing again and realize it's going to take me a while to fully build out everything that was there. So, I delivered the core features and still need to crank out the additional ones. As expected, the players are looking for their beloved features lol.
I want to thank my husband @Johnny_J_Jones who has been sooo supportive! You never once complained about me spending all of my free time on this. Instead, you helped me out by taking on some of my responsibilities and cheering me on every day.
Oh and your eye for design came in clutch! I can't thank enough for being my #1 fan 🥰 I love you!
To my coach @ryanleecox (yes I had to hire a coach to see me through these obstacles), you've been incredible! Thank you for helping me how this can be possible and helping develop systems that enabled me to incorporate this in my life. Hire Ryan y'all.
coxcoaching.co
coxcoaching.co
To my best friend Schlanda who is not a techy but would sit with me for hours thinking through design from a user perspective. You're an amazing friend and I love you.
To my good friend and rubber duck @marktechson who checked on me all the time and helped me stay on track without killing myself in the process.
I first heard Mark on a podcast where he talked about how he built his @totallystrong app while working full time and being a family man with a small child. Hearing this brother talk about how he did really helped me believe I could too!
Then I heard the GOAT @kelseyhightower give a fascinating keynote where he demoed running a Fortran app in K8s. The message I took away was you don't always need to chase everything new! Use what you know and blend it in with a bit of new and basically get it done!
So I did. My tech stack is not what the cool kids would consider sexy. I kept PHP on the backend, I used Bootstrap and jQuery on the frontend. And guess what, it works and I think it looks great!
I had to remember, my players don't know or care what tools I use to build. They just want the product working and secure.
And last but not least, my darling friend, best to ever do it, none other than @sarah_edo. Last year, after many drinks, I mustered up enough courage to show this Frontend Goddess what I had been working on and her mouth hit the floor.
Sarah being impressed was the final push I needed to see it through. She's been checking on my progress since then, tells me what NOT to do in CSS lol, and fusses at me for making my life harder than it needs to be by not using a framework for an app this complex.
So whew! I'm breathing a small sigh of relief. Ecstatic to have reached this point and am super proud of myself for finally achieving my goal! 🥳
@threadreaderapp please unroll
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