Work has been sapping my will to do anything after hours due to the intense frustration of getting SNMP to just bloody work. SNMP stands for “Simple Network Management Protocol”, and it seems to be used for things like managing embedded systems or sending alerts when something goes wrong. The problem is that it’s based on top of UDP (User Datagram Protocol), which unlike TCP (Transmission Control Protocol, or what most applications like browsers or email clients are ultimately built upon), doesn’t attempt to be reliable. This means that, depending on the protocol version and what alert/notification type you send, there might not be any sign that it went wrong!
I never thought I’d say this, but I think I might prefer frontend development – making the parts of web apps that everyone can see and thus complain about the most if it isn’t “visually compelling” or “not pop enough” – if only because I can actually see when it goes wrong! So, to try and force myself to learn a JavaScript framework for my CV…I’m going to build a mirror site for Connacht Disaster Zone.
What it’s going to do
This will be a static site with limited pages:
- Home page
- Artwork
- Stories
- Collections
- Videos
Interactivity is going to be limited to image slideshows or the ability to display a PDF in the browser. I might add a panel somewhere to email me with comments, but that’s a lower priority.
What it won’t do
- Replace this site. In fact, the images for the artwork page will be hosted here, and simply embedded there.
- Be an SPA (Single-Page Application).
- Have any database or backend.
What it’s going to be built in
The biggest problem of starting a new JavaScript project is choosing one of the gazillions of frameworks that all claim to be the One True FrameworkTM. Previously, I’ve kept to using Bootstrap with some jQuery around the side for one very big reason: I don’t have to fight it very often. I can just embed it in a webpage without interfering with my code, and it provides some styling for me.
From reading up on this, it seems like The Big Three are Angular, React, and Vue. By all accounts, Angular expects you to write and design your code in a very specific way, so it’s probably the heaviest of the three. React was originally developed by Facebook – whom I absolutely loathe – so I have some reservations about that, and since I have to use it at work…I reckon I can pick it up there. That leaves Vue.
How I’m going to build it
This is the part I haven’t worked out yet. I’ve started looking at using GitHub Actions for this, but I’ve never used these before. What I want is to be able to commit to the repo and automatically build the site, rather than manually configure npm or yarn or whatever. Getting those tools to just work is one of the more annoying parts.
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