Building Recoup

A web application that is used to help athletes not clog up hospitals and seek medical advice from all over the world or local medical practices.

Check it out here:
Recoup

For those in the future, just have a web search for “Covid-19 SA lock-down” and you will gain context for what was happening at this time.

This project went on to win first place in the UCT Developer’s Society Vac Work Engagement Programme: Week 1 which focused on web servers. I was so stoked to win, and I am excited about the project itself to evolve, either in my hands or another’s. Get in touch if you have more for me to look into.

One way to go over this is to write about it all, but another is to have an interview, but since I have no interviewer, I’ll be asking myself a bunch of questions (if you know me well, this should not surprise you). A nice mental picture to keep is one of a me that has a moustache and goatee(R) asking questions to the me that you know(HC), unless the me you look just like that, then just add glasses to one of them. So here goes!

R: So why did you do this, my man?
HC: Well it’s simple, I just saw an advert for a competition on campus with everything going on, and the main idea was to build an app that somehow will help with the current situation with the virus. After seeing that, I could not help but want to compete for the top prize but also challenge myself because why not!

R: Was it difficult to come up with an idea and build?
HC: Yes and no. Well both to some extent rather. It was hard initially to form a base idea of what to do. It was so open-ended that I could have done so much but thank the Lord I was into running and cycling a lot, so I thought about what I’d love to see change. From there, I just knew it had to be this. With regard to the building process, it was such a learning curve! I was working with tools I was not used to and I needed constantly be guided by a tutorial to make things work out well and…

R: What tools?
HC: …oh, I used Django and all my raw talent in HTML and CSS. I also first used bootstrap in this project for the first time! So I was also getting accustomed to that as well.

R: How long did it take to build and are you proud of it?
HC: All in all, we had 5 days to build, but that was extended to 7 days on the initial hand in date. I feel like I could have put a lot more work into it, and it would have come out a lot nicer and had more features, but I was so busy that week with running and getting tasks done such that I did not spend all my day on it. On Friday I was not too happy with what I submitted not knowing the date had changed, but what I sent in on Sunday night was the best I had. I was so proud that I couldn’t stop visiting the webpage to see it live!

R: Wait a webpage! Where?
HC: Well I’m working on putting it on recoup.chirambaht.info but for now you will find it on https://chirambaht.pythonanywhere.com

R: Well it’s been a pleasure having you share this with the world, I know that your time is very valuable, but I’m glad we had this chat, all the best with all your future endeavours!
HC: Thanks so much, hey, I always enjoy spending time with you, and I’m super keen to do another one of these for a future project.