DEV Community: LawrenceMueller

From UI to Authentication - New Years Resolution - Dev Log 37

LawrenceMueller — Sat, 23 Jul 2022 23:23:12 +0000

As the title says I am moving on from the UI this coming week to creating an Authentication flow. I just finished the UI for the main page of the website. While there are still other pages to build out, I think it would be smart to implement the Authentication flow early in the process.

The Next JS documentation provides two authentication patterns as examples. One is for static content like my home page and the other is for server-side generated content. In order to use these, you need to have a way to authenticate users. For that, I am going to go with Auth0. The reason I am going with Auth0 is mainly that it is completely managed for me and there are ample tutorials online for integrating Auth0 with Next JS. If I were being honest, they also are killing it on the marketing. I can not even really think of other options that manage user authentication for developers besides AWS Cognito. Since I now have a full-time job, the time I get to spend coding on this New Year's Resolution is a lot less than the months prior. So instead of looking into a million options and fighting with some random API because it is cheaper, I am just gonna go with the big name. Security is not something I want to slack on anyway.

As per usual I would love to show off what I have been making, but I still love the idea and still have not gotten past the "someone will steal it" phase. I know it is dumb and cheesy but romanticizing the project you are working on is part of being a developer in my opinion.

I understand why everyone does not make a tech start-up now - New Years Resolution - Dev Log 36

LawrenceMueller — Sat, 16 Jul 2022 05:21:59 +0000

I have had a proper 9-5 job for 3 weeks now. I now understand why most developers do not try to create tech start-ups all the time. After 8 hours of staring at a screen, I do feel that it is more difficult than before to get into the proper flow of things. With that on the table, I am still coding routinely and remember why my UI's are usually simple. Creating awesome animations and beautiful UI's on all screen sizes is difficult. Now that I have iterated twice over my website's home page UI, I am making the decision to dumb it down and make it simple like my last project. A simple UI done well looks better than a complex one done poorly any day of the week. I am particularly excited that I have outsourced my Hero image to Fivver. This time round no holds are barred. I will use a professionally made image instead one I found on Google.

I also have a cool CSS trick to report. When creating the header for the third time, I decided to implement a hamburger menu. I rendered this under the section that had the rest of the header in the DOM. The problem was that when the menu would slide out it would go over the top of the hero section but not the header (because in the HTML it was rendered second). I figured that if I just slapped a z-index on it then that would solve my issue. It did not. So before I rearranged the HTML (JSX in this case), I decided to solve another issue with the slide-out menu. I needed to remove it from the document object flow in order to not have the rest of the site rendered under it. The menu having a height of 100vh obviously needs to have stuff under it. So I made the position absolute and the hero section appeared where it should, success. But then I thought to just add a "top" property to the slide-out menu to force it into covering the header; that way I do not have to bother with the HTML. In doing this I found a cool trick, if you add a "top" value of 0px, for some reason it renders the slide-out menu over everything else, even the header that is technically above it in the DOM. The slide-out menu does have a height of 100hv so it is as tall as the screen, but before the "top" value of 0px it would not cover the header, now it does.

Just thought I would share that trick. So I am gonna get back to the grind. Sorry for the terrible blog schedule. Got a lot on my plate right now. Honestly, I still love the idea of the project so I still am not willing to share it.

Back on the grind - New Years Resolution - Dev Log 35

LawrenceMueller — Wed, 06 Jul 2022 06:13:50 +0000

I am officially back on the coding grind and trying to get this metaphoric bread. I am super excited about the next web application I am currently starting on. I do not want to spoil it early on but it is in the education space.

Over the last few weeks I have thought up many good ideas to pursue, but I ended up going with another web application, it's my strong suit. I am allured to trying to create a mobile app or game using unity. That is only because the technologies are still foreign to me, which makes them more exciting. Unfortunately, I do not have time to learn a bunch of new skills and technologies. The clock is ticking and I believe that the smart play is to use the skills I have. Going off that thought, I am going to use the exact same stack as my previous project (the job board); except I might trade Redis for Mongo. Mongo and Redis are both great options for fully managed cloud databases, but while I loved using Redis, Mongo is a little more mature as a technology.

Today was the first day I was getting back into the grind of coding, which felt good. I was looking at the blank canvass and have made a terrible first draft UI for my homepage. I am hoping after refining it a few times that I will have one of those modern SASS homepage looks. The ones that have sections based on complimentary background colors, if ya know, ya know.

That is the update. I am back at the grind. I will spill the beans on the idea later once I get further into development. I am one of those people who romanticize my own ideas, so for now I think it's just about the best idea ever. Once I get to marketing and actually attempting to get users, my many failed attempts will deflate my ego real quick; but for now, this idea slaps.

Long Overdue Update - New Years Resolution - Dev Log 34

LawrenceMueller — Thu, 16 Jun 2022 23:58:18 +0000

I have not posted a blog for a good while now, but not without good reason. If you are keeping up with this blog you will know that recently I have been doing interviews to make a living wage, which is difficult these days. Luckily, of the companies I was interviewing with I landed the position with my first pick. Which surprised me because I felt like I flopped on the technical.

The good news is that I now have a great position with what seems to be a great company. They were transparent about the budget for the position and do not seem to mind training me on how to contribute to a team since most of my projects have been built entirely by myself. This is cool because I will learn a ton with this company and hopefully "level up" my development skills. I start on the 27th of this month and am excited about the opportunity. Until I start I have been trying to refresh some of the skills that they informed me were to be used on the job. I sent an email asking if there was anything else I could do to prepare. I got an email back that said "yeah", "enjoy your time off before you start work". This only made me feel better about going with this company.

As for the New Year's resolution, I have one more shot before the year is up. I figure it will take a couple of months to build another piece of software I am proud of and I can market. Then it will take even more time to market it effectively and make it profitable. So, essentially I got one more try to make this work. I have a few ideas but have not cemented which I will go with; honestly, with the interviews and the new job about to start, I have not been thinking too hard about it. That will all change soon though. I committed to this resolution and I am anything but a quitter. So even if I fail (which is much more likely than succeeding, lol) I will see it through and give it my best.

Interviews - New Years Resolution - Dev Log 33

LawrenceMueller — Wed, 25 May 2022 00:39:00 +0000

Since my last update, I have been doing a lot of interviews with companies I have been applying to. Out of respect, I will not name any of the companies. The interviews have been going really well. An interview I had yesterday went really well and I am really excited to potentially land that position. I am already scheduled for what I believe is the last round interview, the technical, with them. So hopefully next week I knock it out of the park and get a nice job where I can grow as a developer and contribute to a team.

Even if I am able to complete my new year's resolution of making enough money from my own software to pay my bills, I would still like to get industry experience and work with other developers. Because having a secure job with a company I like is never a bad thing, I have definitely been putting off this challenge. Instead of working on a new piece of software, I have been grinding AlgoExpert questions and studying theory for the last couple of weeks. Like I said the company I am currently interviewing with seems really cool, so I am trying to do great on the upcoming technical.

I will have to admit though, that I am not great at data structure/algorithm questions. I am not about to go off on a rant about how ridiculous it is to have to solve them in order to land a FAANG job. Maybe I just see the practice as dumb because I am not great at it. On the other hand, if I wanted an electrician to handle the conduit in my house, I do not think that asking him to calculate the reverse charge running through a conductor that is inside a spinning electrical magnetic field would prove his ability to do so; just saying.

I am gonna head back to the theory grind, I apologize for not keeping my nose to the grindstone for the new year's resolution. I will get back to it as soon as I responsibly can.

Moving on to round 2 - New Years Resolution - Dev Log 32

LawrenceMueller — Wed, 11 May 2022 02:10:06 +0000

Unfortunately, I have been trying to reach the Google Ads department for 2 weeks now about getting my account unsuspended. I believe at this point that it is a lost cause. I will continue to make attempts and believe that I will one day have the account back since it was suspended wrongly. For now, though I am moving on to project number 2.

Since my first project is web-based, I figure maybe going the mobile route might be a fun learning experience. I am about to dive headfirst into React Native. My goal will be to learn how to use the technology properly and then build a type of management content system for content creators. After doing loads of research, I feel that the content creator space is a great target for a mobile app that allows them to more easily find which content works and which they could save themselves the time on producing. I apologize for not making an update last week, I have been sick lately and while it is not serious, some of the symptoms have been annoyingly sticky. Either way, I am moving on to probably the only other project I will have time to seriously attempt for the rest of the calendar year. This means that this next one is my last shot at completing my New Year's resolution. Let's hope it turns out to be a winner.

Google bots bringing me down - New Years Resolution - Dev Log 31

LawrenceMueller — Tue, 26 Apr 2022 22:58:28 +0000

The last week has not been too hot. Got to have lows to appreciate the highs though. While trying to start my Google Ads campaign for the job board, my account got flagged by a bot for suspicious activity. I thought okay no worries I will send an appeal of the suspension and get all of that sorted out. The appeal went no where and was not read by a real person. Instead I got an email saying that my account is suspended permanently at the user level, so do not try to make additional accounts. You can tell the email response was automated, no name at the bottom, no personal information used (not even "Hi, Lawrence"), and when you follow the links they just go to general documentation pages that do not actually help.

Obviously this is terrible news. I started to look into it and apparently I am not the only person having this problem. Many developers have had the same experience. Google Ads suspends their account for no reason, and they can not do anything about it because all of the support is automated. Here is a thread where many people like myself have commented on the problem, you have to scroll past the recommended solution, which if you read the posts, does not work.

https://support.google.com/google-ads/thread/7953006?hl=en

On a more personal note, I am now very sick. Luckily it is not COVID, but I do have an upper raspatory infection. I have just been chilling and using my time to rest, I can not seem to pick the project that I would like to pursue next. I like the ideas of a SaaS, a mobile game, and a social network. For now I am not too worried about it though. Just trying to get my health back before I start my next code grind.

Been Busy - New Years Resolution - Dev Log 30

LawrenceMueller — Tue, 19 Apr 2022 23:17:51 +0000

Since my last blog post, I have been busy with Easter, interviews, and fighting with Google Ads. While trying to create an ad campaign for the job board with Google Ads I ran into an issue. Google flagged my account for "suspicious" activity and suspended my ads campaigns. I am pretty sure that a bot flagged me because I have not spent a dime yet. I got flagged right after starting my first-ever ad campaign. I have already reached out to Google to resolve the issue. They told me to expect a response in 5 to 10 business days, so looking forward to that. The automated support they have is in Beta and could use some work. It was a pain figuring out how to appeal the suspension.

I have also been interviewing with a company for a full-stack web development position. The company seems cool and online reviews from employees make it sound like a good place to work. The initial interview went well and I have been invited to do a technical, which I am hoping to get done sometime in the next couple of days. With both of those updates and Easter plus work, I have not had a ton of time to start a new project. I am leaning towards starting a SaaS or trying to cheese my way out of poverty with a mobile game. I honestly have been feeling the old Unity itch.

One thing that I was able to get done that is productive is that I fixed a bug with the job board. It was not sorting jobs via date by default. It turned out to be a simple logical error in the sort by date function. Now that I have updated it, the website is behaving as expected. So I do not have a ton to report this time, my next post will probably be next week.

Cutting some losses - New Years Resolution - Dev Log 29

LawrenceMueller — Tue, 12 Apr 2022 22:28:25 +0000

I have been trying to market my job board for weeks and have found no success. Emailing companies and offering free listings did not work, getting in contact with Influencers in the developer community yielded no results, trying to join Zip Recruiters partnership program also gave me no results. My latest attempt has been to manually put jobs on my site so that I can pay for Google ads and hope that continual traffic somehow jumpstarts the site. It is too early to tell if that will get me any results.

Unfortunately I feel that I have hit a wall. I have decided to move on with another project while still giving the job board some of my attention. It makes me feel very sad. I thought that if I just approached marketing with the same zest that I did development that something would stick, but it has not been the case. So in order to actually complete my New Years resolution, I will start developing another application.

I have not completely decided on what type of application, but I am leaning towards mobile. I learned Flutter a while back and enjoyed the developer experience, and would be willing to get back into it if I could turn a mobile app into a profitable venture. If anyone has any ideas for a solid mobile app, please comment. I have a pretty good idea for one or two, but I am definitely open to other ideas.

Another route I could take is to create a SaaS. Many people have suggested them to me in the past and I know that a good SaaS would make decent money. I really do not know exactly what to do next, but standing still will get me no where. I still apply to development jobs every day and get no responses from that, and I still code almost everyday, even if I do not push to GitHub. I recently applied to a position with Twilio, they have a hatch program for early career developers. It would be a great opportunity but they probably meant people who just finished college or a boot camp, not someone who has been unable to get a job for almost 4 years despite having a degree and still delivers pizza for a living.

Life is not great right now, and it has not been for while, but things will change, I just need to keep plugging away and eventually my luck will turn around.

Marketing is not Easy - New Years Resolution - Dev Log 28

LawrenceMueller — Wed, 06 Apr 2022 22:17:47 +0000

So for the last week, I tried multiple strategies to get companies to post on my newly published job board. So far absolutely no progress has been made. I tried signing up for a partnership program with ZipRecruiter and got no response. I tried getting a paid spot on a popular YouTuber Developer's channel, no response. I attempted to give free job listings to companies, no response. So I am kind of at my wit's end in terms of actual marketing strategies.

I guess the next thing I am going to try is pretty simple. I am just going to manually create job listings for companies that already exist and have the apply button go to the form they already have set up to apply through. Then once I have a bunch of those on my site, I will pay for some marketing through Reddit or YouTube or something. My hope is that if I can get developers to apply for jobs through my website, the companies will notice, then start to use my site legitimately.

I apologize for not making the usual amount of these updates lately. I just do not have a lot to say. I am a developer, so it was easy creating updates during the development process. Since I have no experience in marketing this is really my first go in the field. Since progress is non-existent I have very little information to share with people.

1st Attempt at Marketing - New Years Resolution - Dev Log 27

LawrenceMueller — Thu, 31 Mar 2022 23:25:24 +0000

If you have been keeping up with this blog series at all you will know I just finished my first product, a job board (consolejob.com). As of today, I have failed my first attempt at marketing. I figured that if I offered companies free postings on the site initially they would say "sure thing, no risk to me". They ended up saying " ". I reached out to several companies with the offer of free listings and got silence in return.

After doing some research it turns out I have a "chicken and egg" problem. I need companies to post on my site in order to make money and get the content and backlinks needed for SEO, which will draw in developers; but they will not post unless I have developers actually using my site to find jobs. I figure that getting developers to show up to a site that has job listings is probably easier than getting the companies to post job listings. So for now I am focused on getting the first job listings.

I am not a business marketer, I am a developer. So learning how to get companies to take a risk, even a free one, is not coming easy. Another strategy I tried was reaching out to partner with ZipRecruiter. They have a program where you can post the jobs they have on their site and get money based on click-through. Again, I was met with silence.

At this point, I am starting to wonder if it is illegal to just make the listings myself and have them redirect to companies that have open positions. For example, Blizzard is hiring for a host of positions. When you click to apply it sends you to a form on a specific webpage to apply. If I create a listing on my site for that same job and then have the apply button redirect to their specific webpage, is that illegal?

Right now I am brainstorming ways to get this site off the ground, I have come up with a few that have some merit if you ask me, but for now, just getting one job listing is the goal.

Launching the Job Board - New Years Resolution - Dev Log 26

LawrenceMueller — Tue, 29 Mar 2022 02:35:31 +0000

IT'S FINALLY TIME! consolejob.com

I have completed the MVP for the job board I have been working on for the last three months. Everything is live, and I am both excited and terrified. Excited that I have created and published my largest project ever. Terrified because I am sure things will go wrong. But also, c'est la vie!

I have never had to market a website before in my life. So now is as good of a time as any to learn how. If anyone has any tips I would appreciate that. I guess I am gonna send emails to companies asking them if they would be inclined to use my site. I did not know how much to charge for a listing so after looking around, I figure that 75 dollars is a reasonable price for a 60-day listing.

The truth is that I am pretty worried I will not be able to get this website off the ground. I know that for most developers, making this site would not have taken more than a month, but for me, this was a huge undertaking. I feel that if I approach the marketing with the same zest that I took to the development, then hopefully I can actually turn this into a profitable venture.

My goal of making enough money from my own websites to live on is slightly more tangible now. I know that the grind must continue and I should start on my next project which will probably be a SaaS company, but I think for right now, I am gonna chill on the coding for a minute. I went ahead and made a YouTube video showcasing my site, youtube.com/watch?v=daSLAntjGuM . Feel free to check it out.

I am one step closer to my goal, because of that I am proud, but I still have a long way to go.