So I've been watching HIVE for a while now and have been wanting to get involved somehow. Now I've wanted to start a blog for years, but never seem to want to put enough effort into it to make anything happen.
Y'ALL I THINK THIS IS IT
Over the past several weeks, I've been researching and trying to wrap my head around the HIVE blockchain and the different features of each of the different interfaces. I must say I find the idea of creating an app around this blockchain sounds very interesting. Coming from a background in big data and web hosting, I'm going to invest a little time putting something together and see what kind of damage I can do here 😈.
WHY?
I've checked out a few HIVE apps, and it seems there's a lot of options here. One could make a game, or a different/new type of social media app, or even something totally different. There's even opportunities for creating your own tokens on the HIVE blockchain. All of these concepts sound really interesting to me. I have a completely different take on a HIVE app I've used. I can't wait to really dig in and see what is all involved.
I have a kind of haphazard, backwords-ass approach to developing/hacking. Honestly, it is mostly just slacking though. Anyways, I have always been one to want to do things better, and to raise the bar. This weird, new technology we have [blockchain] has so many different possibilities. We are just scratching the surface, and I want a piece of the action.
BAD THOUGHTS SO FAR
Ok, so don't kill me with one punch. Y'all LOVE your JavaScript. I personally think NodeJS and JavaScript are really ugly and gnarly to deal with. I get the whole client-side rendering decentralization bloppity bloop, but I do not like it and I will avoid it unless completely necessary. I guess TypeScript is a step in the right direction, but still... kinda gross.
Running a hived node is pretty annoying. What are plugins and which ones do what? What is done if there's a hard fork? Am I/are my users going to be shit up a creek if I can't reload this node within like two days? Lots of unknowns. Also, I feel like I've been looking at this screen foevah evah:
Decentralization yields this odd partitioning of information. Similar to lots of larger open source projects. I've found a few gems of helpful posts regarding fairly important information that doesn't seem to be listed anywhere else. I feel like I need to create my own wiki just to keep everything straight. Hopefully this gets less complicated as I get more familiar with the ecosystem.
GOOD THOUGHTS SO FAR
This blockchain is crazy. There are SO many different types of people, content, ideas. I think it will be interesting modeling an application around this data. The above "bad" thought about unknowns is also intriguing. Stretching my abilities into the unknown is exactly what I enjoy doing with technology. You learn new skills and become more well rounded.
HIVEMIND. I wish I would've read about hivemind before starting to download all this witness node data. I haven't tried it yet, but its literally the next thing on my list. I'm probably going to scrap the idea of running a node if I can get by with hivemind. But- if some people like what I'm making, I'll continue doing things here and I'll invest the time to run a proper witness, but for now- looking into other options.
The idea of HiveSQL looks dope! I wonder what limits are in place? Might be a good thing to consider as a backup datasource if some things fail. I'll look more into this soon.
HiveSigner OAUTH is golden. I was so happy to see this type of authentication interface available. I will definitely be using this. I would say the same about HIVE Keychain, but yeah- more JavaScript 😖.
My interaction with a few in the development community (on Discord) has been VERY positive. You all were very nice, helpful, and quick to answer questions. I really try to do my own research before leaning on someone for help, but its really nice to know there are helpful people here. I greatly appreciate it.
WHATS NEXT?
I'm going to continue documenting my experience with this little adventure here. This seems like a very different type of development and I'm really looking forward to learning more. I feel like I have about 10% of the understanding necessary to really move forward with these few app ideas I have. That's the journey though, right?
More to come soon.