Do things, write about it - introducing Mellotippet

07 Nov 2023


It’s time to finally start a blog - yay!

It’s something I’ve thought of doing for several years, but, for various reasons, never got around to. What finally did it for me was epsiode 26 of the main podcast that I’m currently listening to, Soft Skills Engieering. The episode is titled “Communicate Your Efforts and I Told You So” and in it on of the hosts, Jamison Dance, mentions a blog post titled “Do things, write about it”. I read the blog post and it recommends writing about things that you’re working on. So here I am! What programming-related things am I working on in my spare time, then?

I’m currently doing a couple of things in parallell, and one of them is developing a mobile app called Mellotippet.

Mellotippet

Mellotippet is an app to compete with friends and family in predicting the outcome of Melodifestivalen. Melodifestivalen is a yearly music competition in Sweden to determine the song to represent Sweden in the Eurovision Song Contest. It is Sweden’s biggest and most popular TV show, and viewed by about a third of the popoulation. The app was used by my family and some of my colleagues for the last edition of Melodifestivalen. For the upcoming edition of Melodifestivalen, which takes place in February, my plan is to make the app available in the Google Play Store and App Store for free. My goal is to make Mellotippet the number one tool for competing with friends and family in predicting the outcome of Melodifestivalen.

I’m developing Mellotippet using Flutter, Firebase Firestore and Firebase Functions. I’m receiving external support with the design. One of the things I love with developing this project is how much I’m learning. Since I’m doing native Android development at my full-time job it’s a great way to keep developing my Flutter skills. I’ve also had to learn about database design, security, backend development, web development, Typescript and several Firebase features.

Upcoming

My plan for the rest of this week is to:

I’m not sure how often I’ll make these blog post entries. Perhaps weekly, perhaps when I feel like I’ve learnt something and want to share it. We’ll see! Thanks for reading. :)