We used Node.js to build this program as discord's API
was best suited and had the best documentation written in javascript.
Node also had many useful libraries used to video, audio, and image manipulation such as ffmpeg and
canvas that was used to make
many of the games like chess or battleship. MongoDB was also a
well-supported tool in node.js that
had the flexibility to store everything we needed in the bot and the website.
Purpose and Goal
In late 2018, me and a team of two other people wanted to create a discord bot that could meet the
needs
of individuals through customizability.
In the end, there were over 25,000 users who enjoyed the customizability and 24/7 usage that many
other discord
bots do not often provide.
Its community helped shape it into what it grew to through suggestions, bug-reports, and donations.
The bot offered many tools for moderation, community engagement, music, games, and other
miscellaneous tools all free and easy to use.
Problems Encountered
This was one of the first projects that all of us had worked on in a team. Therefore, we had to
create
thorough guidelines for developing code together. Coming up with a system where we could all easily
create new commands and handle different events took some time and discussion but the flexibility
that
javascript provided gave us the ability to create command and event handlers which allowed us to
split these things into individual files for us to separately develop in without getting in each
other's way.
Lessons Learned
I learned a great deal of being able to communicate with a team and the community you're working
for.
Having that customer first mindset helped grow the community around the bot and served to connect me
with other clients looking for their own app.
Dustie
A Multi-Purpose Discord bot with many options for moderation, entertainment, music, economy, and
more.
A high level of customization through a custom dashboard made with Angular
We chose TypeScript for better code maintainability as our company grows. Its static typing
and
organizational structures make it easier to handle larger codebases compared to JavaScript.
For the app requested by a softball coach, we needed cross-platform compatibility. React
Native
allowed us to build for both Android and iOS efficiently, with less code required.
Firebase was initially a great choice as it provides a real-time NoSQL database for
synchronization
and communication. It also offers convenient authentication and user management features.
However, we are transitioning to AWS cloud services for improved scalability, as Firebase did
not
scale well and had pricing limitations after the free tier.
Purpose and Goal
In 2019, a softball coach was interested in making her workflow digital. Rather than using many
tools to help her coach,
she wanted something where she could do her work in one place.
The Edge is an app to organize youth instructors working privately with athletes/students.
It puts all aspects of training into one place including (but not limited to) scheduling, drills,
measuring progress, communication, payment and notes on training.
By employing the agile methodology through scrum,
I am able to work with a team of 4 others to get this project off the ground.
Problems Encountered
A challenge for this project was that it has quite a lot of code for each aspect that a
coach would
need.
Therefore, it needs to be testable. However, this testing process did not come to mind at
the start
of development
so much of the code had already been developed before we began testing. While Test driven
development
is not must for every project, it is very helpful to ensure your code is testable and in
working condition whenever
you refactor code, especially in large projects with multiple people involved.
Although this repository is private, here is a code snippet of a unit test written.
Working with a team of people has a lot of benefits and if you're able to structure that in a clear
way
that's transparent to everyone, it can be a lot of fun and the work of setting that up is very
rewarding.
Because of this project and its use of the scrum framework, I was able to get a certification as a
Professional Scrum Developer.
As is the nature of working with many people, you learn a lot from other people and what
they're good at.
From the people on the team, a few things I've learned are UI/UX design, CI-CD/devops and a lot of
the business side of releasing an app.
Edge Coaching
Edge Coaching is a scheduling, assignment, analytics, and communication platform that provides
coaches,
students, and parents a single point of participation in the coaching, learning, and improvement
process.
I chose to use node.js, firebase, and react native because I had become pretty familiar with the
three
after working on The Edge Coaching project for a while. In addition to these three, I used an express
server
in order to communicate between the app and the server that feeds the app information about other
apps.
The server web-scrapes information from other sources and interprets the information and passes it
onto
the client on the phone.
Purpose and Goal
Every year, an organization called
Business Professionals of
America
hosts an event for different age groups across America. My technical high school, The Delaware Area
Career Center,
participates in this each year, and I was selected to attend the national competition for the mobile
application development event.
The theme for that year was to create an app that allows you to review a different type of app.
Because of this, I created an app that lets you review, search, and rate all different kinds of app
on both the app store and Google Play Store in one spot.
Problems Encountered
The challenge for creating this app was determining how to get information about other apps
to rate.
At first, I wanted to use an api such as 42Matters. However, they had a very limiting free
tier that
wouldn't last for the duration I needed. Therefore, I needed to scrape the information right
off of various
websites that provided it. However, in react native, it is difficult to web scrape
information that is server side rendered.
So I opted to do it on an express server where I could use libraries like puppeteer
that could wait for
all the information to be loaded. Using this method allowed me to successfully get
information about each app
and rate, review, and search for them accordingly.
Lessons Learned
Working on this project, I learned that presentation is everything. Being able to communicate
well with your audience (judges) that may not know all the technical details is very crucial to
gaining support for your work; weather that translates into potential stakeholders or other
opportunities for work,
being able to communicate to a non-technical audience is an invaluable skill to all engineers.
Rating Shift
Rating Shift is an app empowering you to review, rate, and search for any app on the App store or
Google Play Store.
This project landed me a spot in the 2020 national Business Professionals of America competition.
Minecraft is a game that runs on Java, therefore in order to develop plugins that enhance the game,
java or kotlin is the required language to use. Spigot a custom sever implementation for the game
which is designed to enhance the
performance and flexibility of Minecraft servers by providing additional features and optimizations.
By using this, it allows you to extend the nature of the game and bring life to it in your own
unique way.
The spigot API is large and complex that requires a lot of expertise in various areas of plugin
development. By using the spigot API,
I've been able to develop plugins that seamlessly integrate with other services like Discord bots,
various web API's and databases in order to expand the
functionality and interactivity of Minecraft servers.
Purpose and Goal
This was a project I had a lot of fun working on with a team of four people (two managers, two
developers).
As a developer, I worked closely with everyone to transform their vision of creating a greek
mythology gaming theme
into reality. Collaborating on tasks, sharing ideas, and discussing technical approaches have
allowed
us to leverage our knowledge and expertise.
Throughout this project, I've developed my problem-solving skills,
addressed challenges unique to the Minecraft environment such as anti-cheat measures and third-party
integrations.
Using this experience in the future, I hope to bring my ability to tackle challenges, introduce
captivating
gameplay mechanics, and seamlessly integrate services with external systems.
Problems Encountered
Many problems arose while working on this project. One area of concern was plugin dependencies and
interoperability.
Many plugins we wrote relied on external libraries and other plugins which introduces dependency
management challenges.
These problems can arise due to multiple plugins attempting to modify the same thing simultaneously.
By ensure proper
thread safety through spigot asynchronous API's, I was able to optimize resource-intensive tasks,
and make sure
that different plugins didn't interfere with each other.
Lessons Learned
By working with this project, I was able to take the time to thoroughly understand spigot and it's
API,
familiarize myself with documentation, guidelines, and best practices to use its feature
effectively. I was
able to invest time into planning and designing how different GUI's interact with each other, and
clearly define
each plugin's scope, features, and functionality. By working on a team, we were able to create
effective
collaboration and communication and clearly define roles and responsibilities. I was able to create
clear documentation
to the managers in how to use and configure each plugin to meet their specific needs. By using these
skills and incorporating them
into future projects, I can help streamline development processes and create high quality work that
meets
user and managerial needs.
Pandora PVP
Pandora PVP is a collection of spigot plugins designed for a minecraft server. The plugins range
from enhanced moderation, economy, fun and utility intended for thousands of members.
Spigot
