I Could Build That In a Weekend (Sike!)
Someone from my group chat of developers saw an idea on the internet and decided to replicate it. Building two tools in two months and winners take home a cash prize, so one month, one tool, results. Rinse and repeat for the second month. Now, the responsible adult in me should’ve asked for more details, but all my brain registered was “free money.” Before I knew it, my fingers had betrayed me, and I’d typed “I’m in!”
Fast forward two weeks, and I’m sitting here, staring at an empty VS Code window, wondering if I can somehow pass off a fancy “Hello World” program as a revolutionary new tool. Meanwhile, our group chat is buzzing with updates with people showing off their progress like proud parents at a kindergarten art show. “Look at what my algorithm can do” they’d crow. “Have you seen a more beautiful and sleek UI?” they’d boast. And there I was, still trying to decide if “Hello World” counted as a microSaaS.
Just when I was about to look for an excuse to bow out ( I was sick by the way), salvation arrived in the form of a Reddit post. Someone was asking for a tool that could do X, Y, and Z. And I’m like, “Hey, I could build that! It’ll be a quick weekend thing, no sweat.”
Oh boy, was I in for a surprise.
Day 1: “This’ll be a breeze!” (It was not a breeze.)
Day 2: “Just gotta fix this one bug…” (Spoiler: It broke the entire code.)
Day 3: “WHY ISN’T THIS WORKING?!” (Yea, because I kept misspelling and missing indentations)
Day 4: *Rethinking my life choices*
What I thought would be a breezy weekend project turned into a week-long odyssey of coding, debugging, and questioning every life decision that led me to this moment. The data cleaning alone made me question my abilities. Who knew regex could quit half way due to the pattern changes in documents of similar looking documents?
As the deadline drew closer, my routine took a different turn. I started scouting for ways to speed up the interface process which included using code from YouTube to build out the frontend interface without changing much from it. With minutes to spare and my sanity hanging by a thread, I submitted my project. It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t perfect, but boy, was it finished.
So now here I am, caught in this weird feelings between “I did it!” and “Oh god, what have I done?” Voting ends this Saturday at the stroke of midnight, no scouting for votes, nothing. Just hoping that the dev you pissed off the week before doesn’t register their displeasure via voting. Results will be announced at 3 PM, giving me plenty of time to find something else to do.
Will my hastily cobbled together project win the hearts of voters? Or will it be lost in the sea of probably-more-polished submissions? I will be updating everyone here by 6pm EST, if this sleep-deprived developer’s dreams come true or if I’ll be drowning my sorrows by sleeping and dreaming of a world where I wasn’t a developer.
Remember, when life hands you lemons, sometimes you make lemonade. Other times, you just end up with sore eyes, sticky hands, and a newfound appreciation for oranges.
Wish me luck, internet friends. May the code gods smile upon me and may my laptop not choose this moment to do a surprise update.
P.S. If you see someone looking like they’ve seen better days, you didn’t see anything (in Skipper’s voice).
