Biff demo: getting started, deployment, developing in prod

I made a screencast:

While making that video, I ran into a small bug when trying to deploy. I fixed the bug and made a new release. If you've created a Biff project previous to a couple days ago, there's a small fix you'll need to apply manually.

My tentative plan for next weekend is to make another screencast, this time focusing on actual development. In this screencast I only demoed making a couple tiny changes. In the next one I could implement some real features, e.g. perhaps a todo list manager or a tic-tac-toe game.

I could use some feedback for what would be most helpful for me to spend my time on. These are some general options:

• Make more screencasts

• Write blog posts/written tutorials

• Create more small example projects

• Create a large, ongoing project

("Write code for Biff" is another obvious one, but I'll wait until there's a real need for it. Biff as-is, while not "complete," is at least "whole.")

My default plan is to combine "make more screencasts" with "create more small example projects" for the next couple weeks, then start on a larger, ongoing project. It would be something useful in its own right, not just a toy example. I'd look for opportunities to write blog posts or make screencasts along the way. I have a few ideas for things to make, in order of descending preference:

• Blogging/newsletter platform. Something flexible enough that I wouldn't feel the need to keep making my own sites from scratch.

• Music recommender system + playlist manager. An "AI"-assisted playlist creator that can export playlists to Spotify et. al. Use it for 5-10 minutes per week so you don't have to listen to the same songs over and over.

• Discussion/community platform. A single place that supports different kinds of conversation (long-form, single-threaded like Discourse; multi-threaded like Reddit; and chat-style like Discord/Slack).

The goal would be to have a decent sized project so that people have a good codebase to read that goes beyond small toy applications. Ideally it would also give people an opportunity to make PRs. Let me know if any of those ideas stick out, and I can do a more in-depth write-up. All three of those ideas have been on my mind for quite a while.

In addition, if any of you have ideas for open-source applications (either one of the ideas I listed above, or your own idea) and want to be the maintainer and potentially collaborate with other Biff users, that'd be swell too! Let me know.