Readit Newshttps://global.honda/content/dam/site/global-en/topics-new/c...
Why is that? Is it due to the nature of chemicals it uses?
Right now it's been commissioned by one customer and is a hodgepodge of duct tape and glue.
Trying to slowly refactor functions so I can truly make a platform and onboard new customers.
Curious if there are any other Guyanese folks out there who're willing to share their experience.
Mostly consider myself Lucian and I feel like I've assimilated into the American tech population. My history now is just a interesting fun fact. Don't meet too many people from the Caribbean in general in tech circles, so it's always fun to get a reminder that they're out there.
The price is a bit high, but glad to see it in the real world.
Started off as a one off solution for a single client, but then I realized that I could generalize it.
The one off solution is running for my client for the last year, but the generalized API is still just a docker container on my PC.
I've been starting to write about the dev process[1]
AI of course just answers it. I can ask it follow ups, I can give it loose code and it just gets it. My grammar can be riddled with spelling errors and it still gets it. I can go back and forth with it and get a fine tuned answer.
When I used SO I had always just wanted an answer, but had to accept answers that were close, but not quite what I needed.
God forbid if I needed to post a question. I'd immediately get hit with over moderation, or someone closing the question for whatever reason.
I used to be an avid SO contributor up until around ~2015. I saw the mod community turn snarky. AI is just a better way to get stuff done.
I went to school with the son of the owner. For about 3 years off and on he'd been asking me about building apps, where he could find good devs, what price to pay.
I'd sent him some info, but never got too involved. Then the pandemic hit, and I found myself with a bit more time to kill, so I listened more to what they needed.
They basically wanted to get a loyalty program going at their gas stations and partner gas stations, but wanted custom rules which their current provider couldn't do with their off the shelf solution.
They also wanted to use one of those old school CC machines that were everywhere before the likes of square showed up. But getting your hands on those units is expensieve.
So I started planning it out. They needed to store customer data, and needed a point of sale device to swipe customer loyalty cards on, which needed to read in customer info, do a deduction, or a store credit top up and print a receipt.
I found a android terminal machine off alibaba, opened up android studio and started hacking away. I hadn't done more than a basic android hello world at this point.
For the backend I used django to get started quickly, and they were very happy to use the django built in admin panel to do stuff as needed, and view transactions.
After I got the devices talking to django, I had to integrate a loyalty vendor they already sourced, and just went along with it, but that was a mistake. The vendor points API doesn't really add much value on what django can already do for me, and my new goal is to become that vendor since I think I can do their product better.
But basically I iterated on it for about a year, launched a little over a year ago, still working out some edge cases and kinks, but they do roughly 25K transactions a month on devices spread out at over 20 stores.
They want to bring it to new islands, so I'm trying to remove some of my duct tape fixes with more stable fixes so that can be smooth sailing come next year.
EDIT: Might get back to writing and update with a much longer post. Draft:
Nothing much to show other than one client, but I'm on the cusp of charging them monthly vs getting paid by the hour.