At this point in my journey last year, it was clear that my method of sharing my work was subpar and detrimental to the work itself. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a GREAT site, but compared to the long 'under construction' that it was, it is a big step up. But taking a month off from gamedev for webdev seemed to be cheating, so I needed a tie in of some kind. My answer was to work on a RESTful backend as part of the site upgrade, as practice for storage and use in my general freelancing work.

A full webdev stack is ALOT of technology, and the javascript framework ecosystem is always changing. In addition my server has long run on Django with Apache, and I saw no reason to move off that, but my Django was version 1.1, years out of date.

  • For a front end, CodeRedCMS, a wagtail extenstion
  • DRF (django rest framework) for my restful needs
  • Vue 2.x to actually use the DRF in a meaningful way

CodeRedCMS and a Django upgrade meant embracing Python 3.x finally. Which also meant getting used to virtual environments and other stuff I'd been avoiding learning. It was alot easier than I had thought it would be thankfully!

I really dislike Angular javascript, and my freelance apps CAN use Vue instead of Angular, so went to learn that. Unfortunately I started learning this AS vue 3.x was coming out. Unfortunate, as the changes between 2 and 3 are extensive enough that I felt like I was in the middle of the Angular 1 -> 2 upgrade mess all over again. Still I liked Vue 2.x and felt the results I got out of it were pretty great. The 'editor' worked, but I unfortunately haven't found the time to test it thoroughly enough to hand out to my customers. The pandemic eats all.

Overall I have less to say about this month than I thought I would. I did ALOT and used alot of technology, but a year later, little of it stuck. All my Vue work feels like a waste, and I'm hesitant to learn the 3.x version at this point, despite liking it more than React on initial impressions, Reacts maturity just calls to me more these days. The backend work was useful, but not something I've used for the Gamedev realm yet. Still getting the site up and running was a big win for me.

This Whole Site Pros (1 year later)

  1. Blog that I'm happy with!
  2. The overall Vue site is one the favorites I've done visually
  3. DRF is awesome and I've used it on production apps

This Whole Site Cons (1 year later)

  1. I've done nothing with Vue since, and if I did all I learned would be useless
  2. The actual style and visuals of the site are meh
  3. I should have released the safeharbour editor already

On a revisit, I'd change...

  1. Maybe use React over Vue
  2. DRASTICALLY reduced scope to just be a harvesting game and Ax combat completely