App in a week? Codename: My

It’s half term next week, which means I have a full week to slack off before my final exams approach and I freak out a bit.

I want to spend this time as well as possible, so I think it would be a good idea to use it to make a new web application I’ve been thinking about doing recently.

I’ve discussed the ideas with some friends, and think it will be quite… erm… beneficial to me in more than one way, and of course others will be able to use it, too.

What is it? Well, a sort-of-logical extension of Buster Tests.

So, the question is… am I able to make it within one week (well nine days)… have it online, ready to use and not-so-buggy. It’s a challenge alright, but I think it would be fun to see if I can do it or not.

As far as a specification goes, I’m not entirely sure what I want it to do yet. As these things tend to go, I’ve been playing around with ideas in my head and refining the thoughts even before they get onto paper. That’s probably not such a great method… it’s usually best to get all your ideas out there in front of you and ready to work with.

But it should mean that I spend less time faffing about.

What I do know is that making this work well is going to be hard, and for me it will involve a considerable amount of programming in PHP and MySQL, which I’ve only ever done a few times before. Thankfully, those few times I’ve done large projects it was for Buster Tests (front end and back end), and since this will be quite a similar application (hint!) I should be able to speed through that end of things.

It’s often said that programming really need not be sitting in front of a computer typing away for hours on end, and that the planning should liberate you from hours of toil. So, I’m going to really plan this out nicely.

I am going to spend some time now with some A4 creating a schematic. With luck, that schematic will allow me to punch out the code in no time, and have an app online and working in no time at all.

By posting my thoughts and aims, I hope you lot will act as a sort of background pressure to get it done. I’ve been faffing about with this idea for months now, and need it to be real for it to be useful.

Here it goes - hopefully the results will be quite special, useful and (most of all for my market) fun!

Oh, and hopefully it will work.