Welcome to icanbudget!

Goal - This will soon be a web app that helps people set up a super simple budget. It will be like an excel sheet, but just with a few more bells and whistles.

Links - Jack Test

Apr 1, 2024 - Playing with Neocities more, almost got an FTP type Webdav setup to make file management easier, but it was read-only... but, plowed on and got a type of jack in the beanstalk javascript thing going with chatGPT and some blood-sweat-tears. I was goofing with the boys yesterday and one of them asked about funny javascript we've built before with lion animations and I immediately thought of the jack and the beanstalk animations I could do with chatGPT. Got it working in under 12 hours. That's really fun! The beanstalk story could be a metaphor for getting them golden eggs : ) I'm going to keep playing, it keeps me feeling fresh

Mar 31, 2024 - I joined a fintech company!

Jan 7, 2024 - I tried a few no-code options and I just felt trapped. I did web app developement decades ago and just want to see if I can push myself to do one again. I feel like it will set me up for success better in the future and give me more flexibility to make the app funner for users. So after lots of looking around, joining microconf connect community and consulting chatGPT, I decided to use Ruby on Rails. I know it may not be the cool kid thing and might have some slowness issues down the line, but it feels like DHH (creator of RoR) really understood the inefficiencies of raw ASP/PHP web app dev and created a language that gives you the power of raw coding, but with a consistency that allows a community to form around it. Basically I know that if I think "oh, I'll need user authentication stuff", someone else has already thought of that and built it or has a tutorial AND I can create what I want with minimal code and lots of reuse (or low duplication). I may regret this later, and/or maybe no-code is the way to go... but from initial experimentation, I would say that no-code is frustrating, expensive and shields you from the real learning you need to do. It's a steep learning curve.... web apps are no joke. If it was easy, everyone would be doing them. It may seem like everyone is doing them, I assure you there are lots of people with good ideas that are sitting on them because this stuff is H-A-R-D. That said, ChatGPT is an incredible tutor! It feels like I can finally make progress because I have a tutor that is patient, knowledgeable and never gets tired of me : ) I have completed the classic RoR tutorial that comes with the install (a blog). Covers a lot of ground! Next I will find a tutorial to learn how to make an app where users log in and see just their info in the app (multitenancy). Once I have that, I'm going to skip front end dev learning and jump right into ugly HTML MVP. Once I have something you can enter expenses into, I'm going to circle back to React or whatever the kids are using these days. After that I'll finish the MVP, after that I'll hook up stripe, charge $1/user/mth, get my first customer and go from there! Wish me luck! I'll move this to a blog subpage once I have an MVP ; )

Dec 2023 - I am deciding if I want to program it myself or use low-no-code software. There are pros and cons to each, but my goal is to get something to the public asap, so stay tuned!