Skincare in an App!

Skica.me is a new project I have begun working on with my girlfriend (business) and her best friend Khanh (graphic designer). We are a remote team of 3 people, working across the world with each other from the United States and Vietnam!

On this project, I am the only developer. Meaning I am in charge of all the technical work from building and maintaining the mobile app and website to managing the servers. All of my favorite stuff!

Experience thus far...

This project is being built with the Dart language and Flutter framework, my first experience with both of them. I found it to be a bit frustrating at first as it reminded me a lot of JavaScript in many ways and the Flutter framework can be a bit intimidating at first. But, now that I've gotten used to it, I actually find it quite enjoyable! It's also pretty amazing how quickly you can now develop a cross-platform mobile application with this setup!

My favorite part about the Dart/Flutter setup is their debugging and testing environment. I'm a VS Code guy and Flutter has developed an awesome plugin for VS that can run both Android and iOS emulators right from the IDE! This makes the developer experience with Flutter very enjoyable.

Earlier I said that Dart reminded me a lot of JavaScript. But, after working with it for awhile, I've found Dart to be a lot more enjoyable. I've always found static typing to be more favorable to work with which is a big plus in Dart's favor. I have a HUGE hate for JS. I probably have no real reason to. I just find JS code to be super messy (Dart seems cleaner, imo), hard to read, and the ecosystem to be a nightmare to work with. But, I digress.

Now, more about the Skica app! Below is a list of planned features as of the writing of this post:

App Features

• Create your own custom skincare routines.
• Select from our pre-made routines.
• Timers built into the routines.
• Search products to add to routine(s).
• Track your daily progress.
• Set daily notification reminders.
• Various skincare challenges.
• Earn points and rewards for activity.
• And more coming soon!

Website: https://skica.me/
Github Repo: https://github.com/nolyoi/skica_app
Original Blog: https://nolanm.dev/posts/18-skica-me-mobile-skincare-application/edit