Beginning a large project

While working on my projects for Flatiron School, I often kept the theme of each one relevant to something I am passionate about- skateboarding. Each project was essentially a different tool to help skaters, and as my knowledge grew with each project, they would become more complex. Eventually, it dawned on me that if I could combine the concepts of the 4 skate-related projects, I could create a real application skaters could use.

Only having initialized my codebase so far, there is still much work to do and I don’t expect this project to be complete for a while. My current plan involves using Ruby on Rails as the backend and React with Redux on the frontend, as this is something I am familiar with. However, I anticipate that I may need to migrate to different languages/libraries, as ultimately I would like this to not only be a website but an intuitive phone app as well.

My current list of features combines elements from each project I created: a user system, the ability to log one’s personal skateboarding equipment, the ability to log tricks you have learned and update proficiency with each one, and the ability to log/view skate spots (as well as being able to comment on skate spots, rate them and their difficulty, view who created them, etc). I have considered adding in a store to sell skate equipment, though I think this is the least relevant concept towards the purpose of the app as well as the fact that I am unsure of the logistics of creating a marketplace. I also may want to implement a messaging system and a trick tutorial section, which would have video explanations of the basic concepts of how to perform a trick.

This is the most ambitious project I have planned on working on. Despite this, I have created many of the components before, I will learn a lot along the way, and the possibility of creating an actually useful tool for skaters of all skill levels pushes me to try.