Hello?

You have probably like me almost forgotten about this blog. Life has got in the way over the last few months, but lets see if I can restart my blogging habit.

In 2017 I want to start a side project for a few reasons. I want to improve my coding skills and look at things I wouldn’t normally during my day job.

I have been trying to decide what to build. The actual project doesn’t matter too much, it is the techniques I use during build that matters the most. I would like something that I can start off as a windows app and then extend onto the web or mobile apps.

I started off thinking about a Rubik’s cube app, however my initial coding has lead me to believe it is probably too complex for my first app.

Last year I spent an evening looking at Connect 4 during a York Code Dojo session. I think this should be complex enough that I can code some logic to efficiently solve the game, however not too complex I get defeated before building too much.

So far I have built a console app that displays via Console.Write() commands, a grid to represent the game, with 0 meaning empty, 1 red and 2 yellow etc. I am currently working on the logic to solve the game, once I have that in a good state I can extend into a winforms app, into a web (MVC most likely) app and finally a mobile app (I have no knowledge about how to do this yet, but something I would like to try one day).

Over the last few days I listened to .NetRocks where they discussed Progressive Web Apps. This sounds like a great challenge for me to aim for. A progressive Web App is a website that automatically detects various properties to give you an app that runs well whatever the state of your internet connection and whatever browser you are in.

I have lots to learn but I can split it down into small sections and I can build something that demonstrates some of my skills.