New Side Project: JAH

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project updates JAH

For a long time now, I have been looking for a side project to play around with. So far, I have been scratching the itch by participating in coding game contests and writing tutorials on this blog. But, I was not getting the satisfaction of having something to show. I wasn't dabbling with new things, and it is apparent that I was losing interest fast. To address this, I have decided to start working on a new side project - Codenamed JAH

So what does JAH stand for? It's just an acronym for Job Application Helper - a piece of software that helps you to track the status of your current job applications.

Motivation

When Gameloft closed in 2016, I was out of a job and talked to many companies and recruiters. At some point, there were so many people I was in contact with that I resorted to my trusty tool - Excel Spreadsheets to keep some of my sanity. Fast forward to the present day, and it seems to be a good idea to port the spreadsheet to an app.

App Overview

The current plan is to have the app available both on the web and mobile. As an MVP, it should perform operations to store the company name, application date and current status. As time goes on, I will probably add more features which will be outlined in future posts.

Goals

To achieve this and to learn something new on the way, I will be using .netcore and Xamarin. I will be deploying to Azure for the web app, mainly because I get free credits from Vista to spend on Azure.

  • Learn .netcore and EF core by building a web app.
  • Learn Xamarin by building the mobile app.
  • Experiment with a TDD approach.
  • Learn about RESTful API. Sync data between web and mobile apps by using a standard API.
  • Reuse shared logic between the mobile and web apps.
  • Deploy the web app to Azure.
  • Deploy the mobile app.

Closing Thoughts

I will try to blog with an update on the progress. As I have already started the project, the next post will outline what I have done so far.

Would this app be of interest to you? Would you like to help test it for me? What features would you like to see? Let me know.