Getting crazy ideas usually leads people down the road to a lot of fun, yet potentially wasted amounts of time. This is how creativity is formed. And this writer is no different. I happened to be bored one night and thought:
how difficult is it for people to get a grasp on how "haphazardly good" a particular programmer might be.
Any company or recruiter could dig through the expanse of our Github profiles but, we usually hoard so much weird stuff in there. In addition, they are rife with forks that we never took the time to do anything with. If Github doesn't accomplish their needs then do they move on to the developers blogs? Many of these are digital wastelands, filled with confusing UI, large images of their console colors, and articles from 2011. Shit, that's a bust as well.
If we take all of the Front-Enders, the UX experts, and the general Web Designer, these people have a collection of their work that they dub "a portfolio". Since, Github is too convoluted of a profile, how do we as developers build a portfolio like product? My solution was to build an app that is inherently simple, however; shows off what I could do within the framework/language.
The result of my toils? This. The application is a cross between Rails and BackboneJs. Instead of using GIT as a log of items, I opted to throw mine into a running "thought log" in the readme. The result isn't something that resembles a traditional portfolio, yet it requires less code reading and easily shows off the way the I breaks down problems during the build process. For the Prag Prog lovers out there, this could not be considered a "toy app" due to the infrequency of updates that it will accrue. In addition, mine will likely never see production.
It is far from perfect; however, embodies a very clear function and process. Without further ado... BOOM!