Hi there - I made a little game in React called Find the State. Goal is to find all the contiguous U.S. States on a map. Frontend and Backend code is open sourced.

Long story short - there was this iPad game I played like 5 years back that just had you find States on a map. I really liked it, but it was buggy and eventually stopped even being served on the app store.

While playing it, I found that my knowledge of where all the states were was really awful. I kinda just assumed I knew where all the states were. It was fun playing it a bunch and getting a lot better.

So I decided to make my own version that tried to keep everything really simple and that could be used as a kinda tool to workout your U.S. "geography" muscle.

This was my first time using Python. Previously used PHP -> Node -> Go. I went with FastAPI and I dug it. It's just really simple and I felt like I wrote a lot less code than usually in order to stand up this API. Def a fan.

For the frontend I went with React and TypeScript, which is what I use at work. This was my first time using Recoil - I really like that as well. I've always used Redux in the past, but I wanted to see if I could eliminate the "store" overhead. I was pretty happy with the result, although Recoil has its quirks as well.

Totally down to answer any question on the code or anything.

Frontend code: https://github.com/johndatserakis/find-the-state-ui

Backend code: https://github.com/johndatserakis/find-the-state-api

Well I think the one thing that I'm gathering is that a normal user won't know to do that (right-click and click "open").

The scary thing to me is there's no "Open Anyway" button that was mentioned further up in the thread.

I haven't used Catalina yet though so I'm not super sure of all these facts.

Thank you! If you have any feedback after you get to use it I'd love to hear it. Thank you!

I'm the creator of RSVP Keeper.

I recently got married and had to organize RSVP's with my wife. A full-stack developer by trade, I began researching online options, figuring there would be a go-to app for us to use.

Long story short - I didn't find something that was:

Pretty to look at. Simple to setup as a host. Easy to fill out as a guest. Priced in an easy to reason way.

After licking the last envelope, I decided to create an online RSVP app for the modern host. I did a bunch of research - polling my friends and family, studying the needs of a host, and rethinking the RSVP process itself.

I think that RSVP's are still a market where most hosts, for events like weddings or showers, are sending out paper invites because of the tried and true nature of it. I feel like the ubiquity internet hasn't fully saturated this market yet.

If you have any feedback please let me know, and if you think by the looks of it that you may or may not be inclined to use RSVP Keeper for your next event, I'd love to know why. Thank you.

My take is that the effort required for paper RSVP's reflects a context that the people involved care deeply enough to go through the formalities. Where all the social conventions are not important, there's Facebook events which have broader reach than a bespoke tool; are easier to use because the scale of resources behind their development; and have much less formality.

To put it another way, an RSVP tool occupies a niche where the host does not follow convention for their own convenience but requires guests to follow convention in an unconventional and perhaps inconvenient way...setting up logins, filling out forms etc.

I'm already married, so I doubt I would use it. That's the problem with solving wedding problems...brides and grooms don't create repeat business.

Good luck.

Yea I think you're exactly right.

There's this formality to RSVP's that I took very seriously in my development.

Little things like allowing guests to be reordered in the guest list - when I first showed that to my friends, it didn't seem like a big deal, but once I explained that certain guests could be offended by being at the bottom of the guest list (considering they're only at the bottom because of the way the host entered them), it made sense to those I was showing.

Another big thing was the ease of use in filling in the form for the guests. In my [example RSVP page](https://www.rsvpkeeper.com/rsvp/08c084c7-ecf2-4aed-8cfc-4fe6...) you can see how that works if you haven't already visited it.

I really focused on making it as simple and clean as possible. I don't even allow theming just yet because I felt that would just distract and confuse the guest filling out their form. This is all done to the benefit of the host of course - so they can capture the highest number of RSVP's for their event.

Thanks for your insight and comments.

I wonder does a situation like this come up every 20 years?

Like before it was TV, then Radio, then... books maybe?

I guess the question is, is the internet worse or more addictive than these other distractions.

I moved all my repos to GitLab almost 2 years ago. I just use the online version.

One of the main reasons I moved was because of price (free), and the available CI. I use a $5 DO droplet to do all my CI running - which gets me unlimited usage. It's awesome, and has only had to be rebuilt once it 2 years due to unresponsiveness.

I've been a big fan of the CI - I use it to build my Docker images, then they get run on k8s. Note - I do not use the AutoDevops feature - so I really don't know how that works for people.

I pack the `gitlab-ci.yml` file with my main building steps and all the other tasks I need to run: deploying to k8s, deleting pods if necessary, running db migrations, stuff like that. It works great - everything just works at the push of a button. And now that I've ironed out the `gitlab-ci.yml` file, I don't even have to think about it anymore when it comes to a new project.

Honestly - I like GitHub's UI a bit better as it's a little more modern, but with GitLab's free private repos - it just lured me at first and I'm content for now.

Since MS acquired GitHub, GitHub also has free private repos

Yup this is a nice take - sometimes these libraries can be a bit cumbersome, but the syntax is simple - similar to bootstrap.

I think the big thing is the design - this looks straight out of Mass Effect or something - really clean, and feels fully transformed - like you're not even looking at the web we already see everyday.

If I do anything futuristic based I'll definitely be using this. Good job.

Yes, and I think their point is that the big manufacturers are just going to waste the water you saved, too.

We still get yellowpages telephone books vomited on our porch to throw away, about twice a year. Three guys in an overloaded car grace us with them, one guy on each side of the street, throwing yellowpages at houses, and one guy driving.

All paper recycling does is keep paper prices low enough that these people can afford to print these things and force them on every household in a city. Remind me why I should be recycling a renewable resource again? You end up subsidizing marginal paper using businesses, who enjoy cheaper paper prices because of the efforts of millions of people, all because society thinks tree farmers should be paid less.

Because you're a good citizen, just doing their part! Maybe if we virtue signal enough, they'll save the dolphins!