Me, a former physicist, just launched my first project using Elixir and Phoenix.

Felipe Lincoln — Sat, 05 Jun 2021 22:37:43 +0000

I couldn't pay my bills as a scientific researcher so I am now adventuring into the tech world 😁

I went from crystallography researcher to a backend developer about 6 months ago. But I started learning web development a lot earlier, and this project helped me a lot in this journey.

The journey started early 2020

This is when I started feeling I should change my carrer and I rescued an old passion, that is coding.
I never thought I could do some decent work with coding, although I liked, it never seemed to me like something I could be good at. But I just gave it a try anyway.

After a brief research on how to build a website, I started learning some javascript and python, which later evolved into learning Vue.js and Django.

HTML and CSS I learned with Shay Howe. If you are starting from zero, this is definitely where you want to start, I can't believe his content is free.

After this I picked a CSS framework. Started with bootstrap (as everyone lol), then went to Bulma/Buefy and now I use Tailwindcss.

Looking on how to maintain the code and how to deploy my application I learned Git and Docker.

My first fail

I already had a good bunch of tools, so I started to develop my project, without any previous planning. Didn't know where I wanted to go, didn't know what I needed to code, nothing planned.

The result of this was, after 6 months of development I didn't reach anywhere. I was implementing a lot of features without knowing this product would even work.

So I decided to learn a bit more about product, what is an MVP, UX and started to think that I could have deployed just 10% of what I have made.

I decided to start from zero, even rebuild the whole Stack. Changed the backend into Elixir/Phoenix using no frontend js framework and Tailwindcss. This stack could be better maintained by a single developer. I could work in only one programming language, Elxiir.

This is when I started writing more in the whiteboard than in the keyboard.

Finally I just made it, didn't over engineered it too much at this starting point.

My project: A blogging platform

This project is a blogging platform where one can have a blog from her/his GitHub markdown files. Allowing the content to be improved by the readers.

www.branchpage.com

Since I heard of I felt in love with open source, so the platform itself couldn't be any different 😄

felipelincoln / branchpage

A blogging platform integrated with GitHub.

I never had a product launched before or done anything like this so I have a lot to learn. I would love to hear your feedback or get your collaboration in the code.

Feel free to comment :)