Me, a former physicist, just launched my first project using Elixir and Phoenix.
Tags: elixir, phoenix, liveview, blog
Published: 2021-06-05 22:37:43

---
title: Me, a former physicist, just launched my first project using Elixir and Phoenix.
published: true
description: Branchpage is a blogging platform that allows you to build an open source blog out of your .md files on GitHub.
tags: elixir, phoenix, liveview, blog
cover_image: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ElQ4NQOXIAI5eMQ.jpg
// cover_image: https://www.physicsread.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/momentum-in-quantum-mechanics-1.png
---

I couldn't pay my bills as a scientific researcher so I am now adventuring into the tech world :grin:

![this is an actual crisis. Bill Nye gif](https://media0.giphy.com/media/cObIzBCAkFxW60ORYj/giphy.gif?cid=790b7611be8ac971f4b2413dd3a4a526d47b98d9602c6f83&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g)

I went from crystallography researcher to a backend developer about 6 months ago. But I started learning web development a lot earlier, and this project helped me a lot in this journey.

## The journey started early 2020
This is when I started feeling I should change my carrer and I rescued an old passion, that is coding.
I never thought I could do some decent work with coding, although I liked, it never seemed to me like something I could be good at. But I just gave it a try anyway. 

![hello world](https://cdn.hackernoon.com/images/f2px36fy.gif)

After a brief research on how to build a website, I started learning some javascript and python, which later evolved into learning Vue.js and Django. 

HTML and CSS I learned with [Shay Howe](https://learn.shayhowe.com/). If you are starting from zero, this is definitely where you want to start, I can't believe his content is free. 

After this I picked a CSS framework. Started with bootstrap (as everyone lol), then went to Bulma/Buefy and now I use Tailwindcss.

Looking on how to maintain the code and how to deploy my application I learned Git and Docker.


## My first fail
I already had a good bunch of tools, so I started to develop my project, without any previous planning. Didn't know where I wanted to go, didn't know what I needed to code, nothing planned.

The result of this was, after 6 months of development I didn't reach anywhere. I was implementing a lot of features without knowing this product would even work.

So I decided to learn a bit more about product, what is an MVP, UX and started to think that I could have deployed just 10% of what I have made.

I decided to start from zero, even rebuild the whole Stack. Changed the backend into Elixir/Phoenix using no frontend js framework and Tailwindcss. This stack could be better maintained by a single developer. I could work in only one programming language, Elxiir.

This is when I started writing more in the whiteboard than in the keyboard.

![writting in the whiteboard](https://media1.tenor.com/images/97b86a94da853c008452d780ad212052/tenor.gif)

Finally I just made it, didn't over engineered it too much at this starting point.

## My project: A blogging platform
This project is a blogging platform where one can have a blog from her/his GitHub markdown files. Allowing the content to be improved by the readers.

www.branchpage.com

![Branchpage landing page](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/bq83ss4zvulotuqcdkjc.png)

Since I heard of I felt in love with open source, so the platform itself couldn't be any different :smile:

{% github felipelincoln/branchpage no-readme %}

I never had a product launched before or done anything like this so I have a lot to learn. I would love to hear your feedback or get your collaboration in the code.

Feel free to comment :)