Road to Cadejo – Part 3 – Tech Stack

This entry is part of 3 in the series Road to Cadejo

Initially, I was planning on creating a pure React Application, and I don’t exactly remember how (one of my friends/co-workers might have made a comment about it most likely) I ended considering two tools: Gatsby JS and Next JS.

I built a small prototype with both of them (oh the time I’ve spent on this project…) and decided to continue with Gatsby JS.

Gatsby Js powers Cadejo.dev!

I don’t want to go super technical in these posts, but I particularly liked how lightweight and flexible Gatsby is.

One of the other reasons behind my decision was a blog post written by Ali Spittel. I was able to take a look at her blog and at the source code that powered it.

I asked Ali for permission to use her blog repository as a base to create my own, and she gleefully gave me her seal of approval.

Seal of Approval - Home | Facebook
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Road to Cadejo – Part 2 – Taking Action

This entry is part 1 of 3 in the series Road to Cadejo

Once I was ready to start working (around June 2019), I made a couple of moves in parallel:

Hiring a Professional

I hired a graphic designer: Sarah Fischer. I knew for a fact that I wanted to put my money where my mouth was, and I…also knew for a fact that my design skills are not very good. Sarah is currently working on her own company, but I initially met her as my co-worker at Code Fellows.

One of the main ideas I wanted to convey with Cadejo was the fact that computer science is a beautiful subject. I remember looking at one of her designs and thinking “WOW that’s beautiful”. I decided to hire her to work on Cadejo as soon as she opened her own business.

This was the ad that made me fell in love with Sarah’s work.

If you pay attention to my website, I’m trying to open my articles with a beautiful picture that sets the tone for the journey.

Look at those beautiful ants

Ok…I know I know! I know it goes against practical advice to spend a considerable amount of money when you are just first starting your website. Even Ramit advices against it, however; I really wanted to convey the beautiful side of computer science with Cadejo, and having such a powerful brand from the start really ignited my spirits.

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Introducing – Cadejo.dev

This entry is part 2 of 3 in the series Road to Cadejo
Cadejo.dev!!! =D

I’ve been introducing SEVERAL projects over the last few years, but I’m hoping this one will be a constant in my life for the foreseeable future: www.cadejo.dev

With Cadejo, I’m planning to create a platform where I can teach one of the things I love the most in life: Computer Science =D. If you are interested in my personal projects, I would really appreciate it if you subscribe to Cadejo’s Youtube channel.

You can read more “official” info about Cadejo on its about page. The rest of this blog post is going to be “behind the scenes” stories about Cadejo and its launch.

Road to Cadejo – Part 1 – First Step

You have no idea how happy it makes me to finally be able to talk about Cadejo. I’ve been consistently working on it for a little over a year now, but I’ve been slowly planning/dreaming about it for about 3-6 years.

Ever since I was in high school I had the feeling that I wasn’t going to be happy in life unless I spent some of my time teaching (amongst other things.) I used to build castles in the sky for quite a while until I decided it was time to stop dreaming and start doing. But, where to start?

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Status Update

It’s interesting (haha I usually say to replace the word “difficult” with “interesting” in a whiteboard interview….) to think that my last post was more than a year ago. Things have been pretty hectic over the last several months and I’ve spent most of my time trying to “stay afloat”. I have good news, bad news, and…news?

Bad News

  • I don’t think I would be exaggerating if I said that the last 7-8 months have been the toughest of my life.
  • I stopped working on every….single…one…of…my… projects. I have nothing to report on the “big list of project ideas” I mentioned a year ago. I still have the ideas. I just haven’t worked on them.
  • Sadly, I think I finally achieved the mythical burnout state. The root of the situation is, of course, the fact that I’ve been working too much during a very difficult time, but there were smaller reasons too. I lost contact with:
    • martial arts and exercise.
    • family and friends.
    • most of the entertainment I love: novels, anime, and videogames
    • self-improvement/self-study
Last week: Graphical representation

Good News

The good news is that things will start to improve, at least a little, soon. Over the next several weeks I’ll spend a lot of time focusing on resting and recovery. Part of that recovery is going to be to finally start to work on the projects I’ve neglected for far too long. (Is it weird that I’m planning on working to be able to…rest?)

I’m going to use Twitter to document the process and to keep myself accountable to living a healthier lifestyle. Follow me if you would like to check that out: https://twitter.com/vladimirsan

I’ll probably write a post here to summarize the process in a few months.

Time to recover

News…?

Neither good nor bad, but one of the most interesting outcomes of this whole process how it may force me to re-think most of my plans. I’m trying to avoid making any big decisions until I take care of my burnout though.

Another one of these posts?

Over the last several years I’ve noticed that there is one particular type of post I always dread to write: a post where I explain a massive change in my plans. It is with a heavy heart that I’m about to cancel my newest project: irpgs.com.

But why?

Time

Even in the earlier development days; it was very clear that iRPGs was going to require a healthy amount of time. Especially after I realized the amount of free time I had while working a full-time job.

In hindsight, that was a red flag for any “side” project. I didn’t want to cancel yet another project, so I persevered.

However; at some point, I had to ask myself “Do I really want to spend this amount of time working in iRPGs and not working on my main projects (the same projects I left stranded because of iRPGs)?” Sadly, the answer is NO. Even if iRPGs were to become super successful, the answer is still NO u_u

Python

I’ll admit this is a weak justification, but I did not have a great time with python. I love python for small scripts, but I didn’t like using python for iRPGs.

It can be said that most of my problems with python stem from the fact that I might not have learned enough python, but I didn’t have a great time with the environment and I don’t think I’ll start another project in python anytime soon.

It’s not you Python…it’s me.

So, what’s next?

Hopefully, I’ll think thrice before starting any other project…

I have a  big list of project ideas in my queue, but I’ll limit my active projects as much as possible. I should be able to write about my next steps in the next few weeks.