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Jenna
Jenna

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Discussion: How do you approach building websites or apps?

Hey, fellow DEVs,

I'm curious ๐Ÿค” about our processes when starting a new project/challenge.๐ŸŒŸ
Whether you have years of experience or are new to the field, I'm sure you have valuable insights to offer.๐Ÿ’กโœจ

Do you start by creating a plan on paper or move straight to code?๐Ÿ“๐Ÿ’ป

What is your approach to development when you already have a design?๐ŸŽจ

What are your favourite tools or technologies in your development workflow? ๐Ÿ› ๏ธ

Let's talk about it in the comments below!๐Ÿ’ฌ๐Ÿ˜Š

Top comments (4)

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tqbit profile image
tq-bit

For small projects, I usually start fiddling around and patch stuff together.

For small to medium customer projects, there's usually

  • a functional specification (what the customer wants) [Obsidian]
  • a 4C-diagram (what the customer needs) [Excalidraw]
  • some wireframes, sometimes low fidelity prototypes (what the customer sees) [Penpot]
  • a task list and brief user stories (what the customer does & what we talk about) [Github / Obsidian]
  • source control, sometimes CI/CD (what the customer thinks is magic) [Github / Github Actions / Gitlab runners / Azure DevOps / Azure Webapp CI/CD]

For bigger ones:

  • Organisation & time tracking (Super Productivity + Jira + all the stuff PMs love)
  • all the other stuff you need for communication, updates, meetings, ...

Sometimes I even write docs, if it's scoped in the budget :)

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jennavisions profile image
Jenna

Hi tq-bit,

Thank you for sharing your process and the tools you use! ๐Ÿ› ๏ธ

Seeing how you approach projects of different sizes and the tools you use for each stage is insightful. ๐ŸŒŸ

Yes, writing docs can help in the long run ๐Ÿ“„, but I bet most of us might not like writing technical docs. ๐Ÿ˜…

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salladshooter profile image
SalladShooter

For creating a website, I usually start by throwing some simple code together and possibly using AI (ChatGPT) to upscale quickly to get an idea. But if it is a larger project I will plan with tasks or draw it out on paper to get an idea of layout (I should probably do this more often). I like to use CodePen and Replit to develop quickly and GitHub to keep track of tasks.

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jennavisions profile image
Jenna

Hi SalladShooter,

Thank you for sharing your process and the tools you use! ๐Ÿ› ๏ธ

Yes, it is best to have a plan before jumping to code. ๐Ÿ˜Š๐Ÿ“
It helps save time while coding, as you know what direction you should be going already.

Nowadays AI helps to speed up development. ๐Ÿค–