Web App in a Week: Learning React.js
The story of breadhaiku.com… (Post #4)
I wanted to learn React.js.
I looked up a few tutorials on Medium, as one does. As far as learning goes, working through a tutorial is probably one of my favorite ways to pick up a new skill. Still, there’s something that feels a little incomplete about it…like you’re simply assembling together pieces someone else made.
Naturally, when one of my friends mentioned he knew Node.js, I jumped at the opportunity to work on an original project. But what would we build?
A dumb idea
When you’re exposed to a new group of people, you inevitably start to pick up phrases that they use. There’s a whole process — you start by laughing at weird phrases your friends use, then you use them ironically to tease them, until one day the same phrases comes out of your mouth unironically, and you’re left scratching your head at how a phrase that once seemed so alien to you managed to worm itself into your vocabulary.
One morning, after my sociolinguistics lecture, I was feeling pretty good. I was ready for a productive day. So, I turned to my roommate and remarked, “let’s get this bread”.
How this phrase snuck its way into my lexicon is a mystery to me; I’m not quite sure who introduced it to me. But it was addictive to say…there was something so mesmerizingly optimistic and positive about it. So I started to say it more and more. Applying to internships? Let’s get this bread. Going to grab lunch with floormates? Let’s get this bread. Studying for midterms? Let’s get this bread.
Making a full stack web application for the first time? Let’s get this bread.
Enter breadhaiku
So my brilliant idea for our first web application was a website dedicated to haikus…about bread. Expressing your desire for fermented wheat based carbohydrates is great, but what if you could do so in the form of Japanese poetry? On a responsive mobile friendly web site?
While pitching the idea to my friend on our dorm’s whiteboard, a few more people showed up and my pitch turned into an impromptu Shark Tank session, with my floormates as the investors. They offered incredible amounts of investment (final offer: 7 cents for 15 percent of the company) and advice on the future of the company (potential expansions: icecreamhaiku.com? breadpoem.com?).
Our final valuation? Something like 30 cents for the whole company. Not bad for a first time tech startup…
A week later, we had a finished product. I built the front end with React.js, and my friend built the backend with Node.js — then deployed the whole thing to AWS. You can see the final product at, well, breadhaiku.com. Or, fork the repo, if you’re so inclined.
The poems
To the joy of our investors, breadhaiku.com gained users very quickly. I’ve compiled a few of my favorite bread haikus below.
“Wake up in the sun
Help i am on fucking fire
Let us get this bread”
“This website is dumb
The poems arent about bread
I am very bored”
“baby bread do do
Do do do do baby bread
Do do do do bread”
You can write your own at breadhaiku.com…
The takeaway
So, did I really gain anything from making a website about bread haikus?
Surprisingly, yes. It was a great way to get acquainted with React.js, as well as other parts of the stack (Node and AWS) — which really came in handy at the hackathon I went to last week. It’s nice to get a “practice run” with a certain stack so you’re acquainted with all the small “Murphy’s law” errors that you don’t want to deal with when it really matters.
Speaking of which…
What happened to Game in a Week?
As mentioned earlier, learning all this React.js came in handy for a hackathon…and my project there was a game. I’ll be writing about that soon.
Past posts in Game in a Week:
