Open Source (tsParticles) Helped me Finish a Years-Long Project Idea

I had a simple, silly idea a few years ago: to program a robot with a function to help you feel a bit better. Before you get carried away, I’m not talking about a physical robot here – just a web page. The idea is, you would go to this web page and would ask, “am I good enough today?” The page would answer, “Yes!”

I had a clear vision for how I wanted the page to work. First, I wanted to display a button that prompted the user to ask if they were good enough today. Once the visitor pressed the button, I wanted them to have a celebratory moment, powered by some on-screen confetti.

In 2017, when I first had this idea, the state of confetti libraries was not as comprehensive as it is today. I searched for “javascript confetti” before writing this article, in 2022, and I was able to find several libraries – even some that are devoted exclusively to rendering confetti (tsParticles does more than just confetti). When I had searched years ago in 2017, I only found one library, and it required a rather expensive licensing fee, which I was unwilling to pay at the time. I reasoned that the cost of the confetti library was too high for the project that I had in mind, and I didn’t have the bandwidth at the time to build the effect myself. So I put the project down.

…Until 2022.

Throughout 2021 and 2022, while I was using dictate.life to catch up on dev.to articles daily, I came across a library called tsParticles. After reading a couple of the product updates that the author would post on dev.to, I suddenly realized that I could finally finish the project.

So, I built it, and streamed it live on Twitch. And I’d like to share it with you:

Am I Good Enough Today?

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoy the tool and the story, and I hope it inspires you to work on your own projects! And of course, thank you to the creator of tsParticles, Matteo Bruni, and the tsParticles contributors!

tsParticles: https://particles.js.org/

Live coding this project on Twitch (NSFW): https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1447226927