DEV Community: Spoder

Learning PostgreSQL

Spoder — Sun, 04 May 2025 20:24:27 +0000

Why did I learn PostgreSQL

Simple, I needed to expand my knowledge of DBA tools, and PostreSQL in my honest opinion is a way better tool than Microsoft SQL Server. I'm currently a student in my 4th semester and we were required to use SQL Server the entire semester, and it really bugged me with how "outdated" it looked and functioned. I'm not sure if its just me who thinks that, but Postgre's dashboard is just miles ahead and simple to learn on your own. It also includes more built in functionality from what I've seen. I played around with the tool for a bit before searching for more info online to learn more. Oh yeah and its open sourced and free. We love free!

I fell in love with it after a few weeks of learning it, that little elephant is a great tool for SQL based DBs.

What did I create with it?

I haven't done much practically so far but I have made a planetary database. It utilizes a PostgreSQL DB to display planets and their information in a table on a web app. The web app uses NodeJS as the foundation and simple HTML and CSS to display everything. You can also click each planet name to view an image of it, more info about it, and even a weather simulator in the background. The database itself was easy enough to set up, offering many tools to auto generate queries and INSERT statements. Adding tables is literally as simple as 123, you right click your schema and just create the table with the properties you need. While I did struggle a bit integrating it within a web app (I'm still a beginner), the community support was good enough for me to figure it out. Postgre's JS library is super simple after you actually figure it out. A quick example is setting up a pool to cache your database connections, making it easier to query directly from the web app.

const { Pool } = require('pg');
require('dotenv').config();

const pool = new Pool({
  user: `${process.env.USER}`, 
  host: 'localhost',
  database: `${process.env.DATABASE}`,  
  password: `${process.env.PASSWORD}`, 
  port: `${process.env.DB_PORT}`,
});

module.exports = pool;

I am still very new to PostgreSQL but as of right now I think its one of the easier DBA tools I've learned. If anyone has other recommendations, Id be happy to check them out!

Out with the new

Spoder — Mon, 18 Dec 2023 05:32:42 +0000

So, I wanted to revive the bot and had no idea how. What better idea than to make a huge Christmas event, that includes new updates and rolls back some old features to bring people back, surely it'd be easy right??

Wrong! This update was probably the hardest time I've had updating the bot as of recently as at first I was counting on only myself and a "fuck it ill fix it later" mentality. Lets just say, that mentality does NOT help you in the dev space. Its been a while since I've actually been super invested into the bot as I've been busy with school and work.

However, I'm not sure at all what sparked it but I randomly got the motivation to make a huge update that'd bring back OG players, and improve the bot so there'd be even more new players!

What can bring OG players back?

I started by thinking what could bring back OG players the most, and what was the most complained about feature? Upgrades. I thought making upgrading more simple was the way to go a while back. In reality, I was just making it more boring to upgrade and personalize your car. I didn't realize that until I thought deep and hard about how the old upgrade system worked vs the new one. I wanted to push customization and personalization for cars, but I was only gatekeeping it heavily with the new upgrade system.

So I sough out to roll it back to the old version. Now, actually coding the old version to work again was the easy part. The hard part was thinking "what do I do about the cars that are on the old system?". I turned to the community and they felt as if they got refunded for their upgrades, they'd be happy. I was certain that I was going to do exactly that, but in the end, it didn't work in my favor. It deleted the upgrades, and it didn't refund the users. I didn't know what to do at that point because I didn't know who spent what on upgrades and didn't wanna open another backup of the database because of how many users use the bot now.

In the end, I decided that I would just give each user 20K per car as compensation in general for the upgrades, AND how buggy the bot has been. Not the best decision of course, but its all I COULD do without surfing through thousands of users data, which I did not have the time for.

Struggling with self doubt

Another highly requested feature was the item shop to return. I was hesitant because of how buggy it was and was doubtful in my ability to make it work properly. Self doubt is a huge part of the development process. I struggle with it in a lot of things, not just development. The only advice I can give is try it first. See where it goes. I had a lot of self doubt due to all the bugs on the bot, but I was mistaken as I actually made the item shop work? I started by thinking how I would improve it vs the old item shop. The #1 problem was it wasn't updating the items properly, and it would have duplicates. I solved this by looping through the array of purchasable items, and choosing a random one. After that item was chosen, I would remove the item from the purchasable items array, so its fast AND reliable.

Conclusion

The update saw a lot of old users return, and a lot of new users join in on the fun! I learned a lot from this experience, especially about knowing my potential. If I can work hard enough, the bot can grow to exponential numbers. The one thing I am working on now is fixing all the bugs, which is tedious and boring but it has to be done to ensure the future of the bot.

AI vs Humananity

Spoder — Wed, 11 Jan 2023 08:41:51 +0000

First of all

I think AI is amazing, and quite frankly, one of the best inventions humankind has came up with!

I think with Artificial Intelligence we can reach new heights that humanity never even thought they could reach. Its just about when that happens, not if.

Can AI replace humans?

Now, I believe it can replace us in physical strength, speed, etc. Mentally? No, hell no!

I've seen a lot of people who use this AI art tool, and while fascinating, I cant help but think that its no where near human levels, and never will be. Why? The simple answer to that is creativity. A robot will never be able to be as creative as humans, I mean just think of a dog in your head right now, draw it and have it there for safe keeping. Now, let an AI draw it, are your drawings different? Exactly! You're different, an AI will just use that drawing and make the same thing over and over, meanwhile you can make it in your imagination over 1 million times and never get the same result

That's the beauty of the human mind, it never stops thinking, and it never stops thinking of something new! Something a robot could NEVER do, if a robot cant feel emotions towards creativity, why would it be creative? Why would it surpass us? HOW could it surpass us.

Now that's just my take on this subject, I know there's millions of takes that could argue with mine, but I'm dead set on humankind being more creative than a little robot.

Brain Food

Spoder — Sun, 01 Jan 2023 07:38:13 +0000

Hey all, kinda struggling to think, and I think I need good brain food to think, so do you guys have any go-to brain foods while coding?

My week so far

Spoder — Mon, 18 Apr 2022 20:34:26 +0000

Anyone else work really hard on a feature, then just give up after a while and find a new solution... That was me just now, tried adding a notification system to my Discord bot only for me to give up 2 hours in, and switch to it DMing said user about something they submitted being approved.

On another note, I reached out to Discord to request the message intent, and to my surprise was responded to in under 24 hours, best support I've received from them so far!

Bot also gained quite a few servers overnight, so I'm excited about that, feeling really good about this bot now, maybe it can be a full time job once I start monetizing it? Who knows!

I expect to do a Live Q&A for said bot in a few weeks or so, that'll be fun as well, engaging with users is key to a successful product!

How mental health affects the ability to create

Spoder — Tue, 05 Apr 2022 20:41:33 +0000

Before we begin

Before we begin I'd like to just say if you are struggling with any of the things below to call someone, or just speak to someone, doesn't have to be a professional like many say, just talking about it to someone can go a long way.

Who am I

Well, I'm Alex, or Spoder, that's who! The proud developer of the successful Discord bot Zero2Sixty. I grew up fascinated with computers, not knowing they'd get me a job later in life. As a child I wasn't the smartest, nor the most productive, yet here I am, trying to push my bot to its fullest so I can maybe make a living off of something I love doing! I've always been a creative person it feels, I loved to play with Legos as a kid, its all I'd play with. I was affected by ADHD, and that made it pretty hard to focus on one task, Id get easily distracted as I built the new Lego set I got for Christmas. It also affected my ability to pay attention in class, I remember I was in a computer science class and even had trouble with that.

Fast forward to now and I can basically control most of my ADHD, although sometimes it will sneak in.

Depression and programming

Not long after I started 10th grade, I experienced what is known to many as depression. I had no idea why, or how, but I didn't do anything about it. As I sit there writing my next update for this bot I have, I do sometimes get randomly sad, and it makes it really hard to concentrate on the next update and pump ideas out of my brain for it. Now normally I'm a very creative person and I can get ideas out like its 1 2 3, but depression makes it really hard to do that, Ill lose motivation, and Ill think about giving up. The bot has taken a little tole on my mental health itself as well, giving me stress, anxiety, among other things. However, that doesn't mean all is bad about the bot, the bot has helped me in ways I could never imagine. It gave me my first pay check from something I made myself, it makes me proud, and it gives me something to focus on daily.

This sounds really silly now that I type it out but its true, I really think Id be stuck somewhere without this bot! I am really thankful for everyone who's supported me along the way, and there's still a long way to go!

Anxiety and coding

I cant even remember when I was told I may have serious anxiety, it has to have been a long time ago as it feels like its been forever. I always get anxious pushing anything in projects, wondering if it'll work, and if it doesn't how will I fix it, will people be mad? Will the project just end? These things really get me thinking and stressed, but I keep going as the thought of it working and bringing people joy starts to outweigh the other thoughts.

What keeps me going

This is a tough question to answer, there aren't many things that are making me get out of bed in the morning at the moment, the bot is the main thing, as I know I want to bring people joy with my ideas. My friends also are a big part of my life, they're always supportive!

Conclusion

Its hard to conclude something like this but the bottom line is, mental health is something big that no one really talks about, and it can have effects on your ability to think properly, things do get better, and if you have something that makes you happy, keep doing it. It makes you happy, don't let anyone tell you that it shouldn't make you happy, or question it, just do it.

What success means

Spoder — Wed, 23 Mar 2022 22:24:22 +0000

This will be a small post until I have more ideas on what to post

Success to me

To me, success isn't about money, fame, or anything, if you have a goal, and you even complete some of that goal, that's what success is. For example, if you have this cool idea you want to make from scratch like a Discord bot, once you have made that bot, that's success.

Success in terms of programming

Some of us programmers expect to get a lot of money from this, don't lie I know you want that. That may be what success means to you, programming something big and having it take off, but just because something doesn't take off the way you expected doesn't mean you didn't succeed. Even if you complete the first page of a website you wanted to make that is success. Success doesn't need to be this big thing. Set goals for yourself and achieve those goals, now that is success. If you have an idea, make that idea a reality! Don't let anyone talk you down from it.

Discord Bot Blowup

Spoder — Thu, 10 Mar 2022 01:15:44 +0000

About this post

To put it simply, this post is about how a simple Discord bot idea is taking off. Here I will document how I got it to succeed, what languages I used, problems I ran into, and more!

In the beginning

In the beginning it was just an idea that popped into my brain, I was playing Forza Horizon 4 and thinking, "What if this was a Discord bot?", and started to think about how it would work, and if it could even work. Eventually I got to the drawing board to make this into a genuine project of mine, little did I know that this idea would turn into an actual community.

Name Choices

Ah the name, one of the most important things about a Discord bot! At first, I wanted to simply stick with "Speed", but then thought that was too generic and unoriginal. I then thought, "Hey, 0-60, that's a car term, right? What if I put that into words?" And so, the name Zero2Sixty was born. Simple, easy to remember, related to the functionality, and unique!

The Alpha

The alpha stage was hectic, I was thinking of how I could even make this work. I mean, a car game in Discord? Where would I even start! Well I knew just where to start, adding some cars of course! The first car models that popped into my brain were the Mazda Miata, the Toyota MR2, and the Pontiac Firebird. Now these were not just any old car models, they were all models I was looking to own as my first car! I decided to add all 3 of them as I wanted a variety to work with, so I could add multiple brands, focus on how they'd look in text form, and overall how the stats would work.

The first race functionality

I needed to add an actual purpose to the bot besides just cars sitting in a database. The first race I thought of was PVP racing, but I needed friends for that, so I decided to make AI racing first.

At its core, the functionality was simple. Each car has a speed, and there are different dice to roll. An example would be, the Miata has a speed stat of 130. The dice are all different, so if your speed is 13 you can roll either a 1 or a 2. There is also a track length that the dice move you forward on. At an interval the track length will subtract the dice roll per second. Keep in mind, this was the first system I made. It was not very good, but it was simple, we'll get into the new system later on.

I had a race command, a few cars to work with, then what? That was the thought in my brain, then I remembered Forza has a currency system, so I got to work on that, it didn't take long, however it required a lot of thought about balancing. Like how I would price certain cars, how much a user could earn per race, and other things like that. I decided to make the AI race have tiers, each tier gives more money, simple right? There were 3 tiers in the alpha phase, this was after I added a few more cars as I needed faster cars for the higher tiers. Next, I thought about how cars would be priced, they couldn't be too high to where the user could never afford them, but they also couldn't be too low to where the user could obtain them easily.

The basic functionality of the bot is done at this point, but there's more I needed to add, I began with upgrades, users could buy certain parts to upgrade their car's speed stats. Here comes another balancing issue! I thought about how parts needed to be priced so the user can't get the fastest car in the game in 10 minutes. The entry level AI race gave 250 cash in game per win, so I used that to price the parts, and how much of a boost they'd give.

Upgrades were pretty much balanced and done, so I thought about how Id push this out to people, why would they want to play my bot out of every other bot? I started by listing it on a site called Top.gg, a listing site for all kinds of Discord bots! As soon as it got approved, I noticed a lot of servers adding the bot, and got shocked, I expected maybe 20 servers max in the first 5 months, but I got to 20 servers within a week! My support server grew as well, and I was helping people with the bot, but then I realized an uptake in users having trouble navigating the bot, the car names were too annoying to type, as it was case sensitive, and the help command wasn't really detailed.

Improving the quality

I started with making the car names easier to type by making them all not case sensitive. This seemed to help a lot and I got a lot of positive feedback from this, but I was not done, I then decided to make an ID system, that the user could set themselves. For example, if a user wanted to type "my miata" instead of 1995 mazda miata, they could set their car to that ID! Then I got to work on the help command, I made it way easier to read, and I added a very helpful documentation website.

Where is it now?

It's still alive and well! People are using it daily, I made the support server into a community, and I'm growing my team! The bot continues to grow even more as I keep updating it, adding more features regularly so people don't get bored, engaging with the community I've built, and I've even made some income off of it!

This post is to show that any idea you have can come to life and inspire others, if you have an idea, don't let anyone talk you down from making it a reality as it could blow up and become something huge!