[ Future ] To the moon and back

[Soare-Robert-Daniel]

Draft

Introduction

At the beginning of the project, LogoMaker started as a side project to diversify our portfolio. A separate app from the WordPress ecosystem. This side project not only accumulate some technical knowledge about working with new technology like Typescript or solving some odd problems ( loading an SVG to a special format into an URL for an image in Safari - knowledge shared with his litter sister).

Starting from some shower thoughts like this, a new project was borne. A project became our first mobile app published in Play Store and which @ineagu is delighted to test and discover the vast landscape of the mobile apps platforms. And more to come.

After some meetings with @mileamadalin, he sometimes asks me: "How is it going with Logo Maker?" and is a tough question. Some months there is nothing new, and others, we wake up with some new feature for going big (like a mobile app). There is an issue with some ideas about what is to be done next. But the list is lacking a big view.

Logo Maker is our toy for testing new ideas. And the features that emerge from them require a new structure (e.g., separate build tools and modifications for web and mobile).

So a big question arises:

To the moon

Right now, we have 2 separate projects: web & mobile. At first glance, they share the same base code, but they have some different implementations in some places. The web version can be derived from the mobile one. So the natural idea is to make changes so that they can integrate easily into another. This was my first attempt at implementing it when the idea of PWA arose. Making this was beyond my experience (I never thought that it would come this far), and so I decided to break the project. The breaking was very easy. All I need was to delete the incompatible code and add a really nice boilerplate for PWA, some easy hosting with AWS Amplify, and done.

Trying to maintain a big mono repository is not that good. Having multiple projects has some downsides: copying source code from one to another. But for our usage, I think it is bearable.

I want to split the app into 3 separate apps: The mobile version, the general web app & research

The first two are already known. The third is more about madness. The current design of the logo maker does not allow much flexibility for adding new features to the interface. So we might test and try new designs to see if some parts fit better for desktop and mobile than our current implementation.

But this trip to the moon has a cost expressed with this question: Is it worth spending resources on this? If we think about gaining revenue, no is the answer. If we think about implementing some functions (exporting SVG with JS that works with Chrome and Safari) and testing some ideas, we could port them as features to Illustrations, blocks to Otter Blocks, or even to OptimoleUI. Then we could be right on the money.

This trip to the moon is like a school research project.

And back

Going to space is awesome, but we need to come back. We need to have some limits when exploring new things. A strategy that peaks in the vast future is needed.

The project will need to have some development states/phases like: Lunching, where we test new ideas and see how good they are, and Landing, where we polish the ideas to pass them to other projects.

Since the beginning, the LogoMaker was in a lunching state with some occasion for refining. And the initial issues for V2 expresses this desire for polishing the existing code.