My Electron app - Organising my bookmarks
Tags: javascript, electron, learning
Published: 2020-08-10 10:16:34

Over the last couple weeks I've been working on a simple electron app :smile: there has been some anger, some love, but mainly there has been code!

Let me tell you about my journey

# :anguished: JavaScript in 2020

You know I'm not an old person (at least I don't want to be known as an old person - not yet, I guess I am nearing the big 3-0 :eyes:. Any way I feel like anyone picking up JavaScript (or as the cool kids call it ECMAScript) won't remember the old days, or should I say the days _before_ node was a "thing". 

Don't get me wrong I am *NOT* nostalgic for those days in anyway shape or form, the days where you downloaded a file, added it to your file system and then added a script tag into your html *shudder*. that's how it was done in my day. 

These days we have node, npm - and let me tell you I was there for all of these innovations in the langauage but as a .Net developer I never really took much notice of them - I was mainly a backend developer.

Couple years ago I got a job as a developer in a website company and we started work on this hideously complex frontend and it felt like we were coding in c++, having to include things in the right order.

Then I looked into some of these technologies that I had been hearing passing coments _webpack_, _TypeScript_, _Node_, and I quickly got overwhelmed and kind of wrote it off.

Since then I have had a few projects where I've been playing around more nad more with Javacript. I wouldn't say I'm it's biggest fan but I get it - I get why people use it.

# :scroll: The Project 

You know when I'm working on a project I'm constantly making notes, on confluence (which I personally hate but you know...) in vscode, but I am also constantly forgetting where I put these things. So I thought to myself - you know what I need, I need somewhere where I can have bookmarks, not just to websites but to files, but I want to organise things by project. You know what else would be sweet? a todo list that has repeatable tasks that keep popping onto your list to say "Hey this needs attention".

I started looking around for something that would have my needs in mind, I mena just the bookmarking tool would be nice, and you know what I was faced with?

This:
![Picture displaying pricing plans for tools](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/gzjnucet56o10qk8n3ei.png)

Now I don't blame companies for wanting to do this, obviosuly they need to make money, but all I wanted to do was to group my bookmarks into categories.... It couldn't be that hard right?

# :bookmark: The pain

So I decided then and there that I was going to start my own bookmarking tool with hookers and blackjack..... More like electron and React :smile:, no real reason I chose these technolgies, I tried the .Net Blazor + Electron dev experience and it was .... lacking, with JavaScript I got immediate reloads and was a lot faster.

So I started my own little thing, it was really slow going, the most of the pain was in the actual _setup_ of the project, every tutorial seemed to be out of date, documentation lacking I had to piece things together. I found my hardest hurdle was actually getting the thing to build and render, and when I finally did it felt like a massive relief.

# Doin a little bit every day

![Electron application](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/9j1b3fn6hdwoe5o80z1d.png)

This is the application, it's really nothing fancy but it works, and it's a massive relief just to be here! Over the next couple weeks I'm going to be tidying things up and hopefully producing a build so that more people can consume it, oh yeah - it's open source :smile:


I'm happy to share more of my story if people are interested but yeah - I'm a little happy with my progress so far so here I am looking for other peoples approval and to prove to people that even after years of working as a dev that new things can be scary and hard but persistence wins out th day :smile:

Have a joyous day friends!