Forem: osakasync

Wrapped up my first simple project. It didn’t reach far, but finishing it taught me more than tutorials ever could. Here’s the write-up (with a short video breakdown):

osakasync — Sat, 23 Aug 2025 10:06:27 +0000

osakasync

Aug 22 '25

What I Learned From Finishing My First Project (INTDEC) | devlog#002

#programming #webdev #buildinpublic #sideprojects

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What I Learned From Finishing My First Project (INTDEC) | devlog#002

osakasync — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 12:23:25 +0000

What This Post Is

This post is meant to bring closure to my INTDEC project. What I learned, how things went and what's next.

Why I Built INTDEC

INTDEC was honestly built as a way for me to start building and finishing my own project ideas. I wanted to create a portfolio made of things that were my own, not just following tutorials on how to build todos.

What Went Well

The visual aesthetic turned out just how I wanted it to - like a retro, forgotten terminal. The visual feedback on errors and warnings also came out well in my opinion.

What Didn’t Work Out

My plan was to learn and refactor based on feedback, but since my post went mostly under the radar and most other communities have rules that made the kind of feedback I wanted harder to get, that didn’t really happen.

Why I’m Moving On

Since it’s complete enough for now, I’m choosing to leave it as-is. It works, and that’s enough for this chapter. I’m ready to move on to building the next osakasync project.

What’s Next

I’ll probably return to INTDEC one day and add the things I originally planned, like a mobile UI and physical-to-virtual keyboard sync. My next project will be a short dungeon crawler raycasted from a 2D grid.

What I Actually Learned

Not every project gets seen, but the act of finishing still taught me more than tutorials ever could:

Limited response doesn’t mean the project was bad. It mostly means not many people saw it.
Finishing a project still matters, even when there's no audience. You prove to yourself that you can finish things
Motivation dips hard without feedback, and that's something to prepare for. Feedback shouldn't be the sole motivator behind creating
Starting is hard, but honestly taking a project to its closure is even harder

Project Breakdown Video

Final Thoughts

It stayed small in reach, but that doesn’t change what I learned from building it. It taught me to manage my expectations, both for the project itself and for how visible it might be.

Thanks for reading.

Live Demo: click here!
GitHub: view the source!
Video breakdown: watch on YouTube

Building a Fake Terminal That Breaks Down Integers (INTDEC) | devlog#001

osakasync — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 12:00:00 +0000

You find an old terminal that lets you break down your favorite integer.

That's a concise summary of INTDEC - a project that’s part of my osakasync lineup (this one’s osaker-001 ^^), where I build things in public and seek feedback. It’s more of a fun little tool, not particularly practical or useful.

Live demo

Live Demo: click here!

GitHub: view the source!

Why I made this

I built this project to learn in public and document my thought process so I could improve through feedback. I also just wanted to prove to myself that I could actually finish something.

What it does

The main feature is breaking down your favorite integer and giving you detailed info about it.

Want to know the divisors? Try divisors <number>. Curious if it’s a palindrome? Run ispalindrome <number>. Want to know everything the terminal has to offer? Use summary <number>!

There’s also:

A fake boot sequence with CRT effects
A virtual keyboard for input
Sound effects for boot-up, key presses (only the virtual keyboard for now), and errors/warnings

What working on it was like

This project started small, just a few math functions, but every time I sat down to work on it, I came up with more ideas.

It ended up taking longer than expected, but adding each new UI feature felt genuinely satisfying.

Even though I didn’t set strict goals up front, the process was fun and chaotic in a good way.

Next time, I want to work on having a clearer sense of direction from the start.

Development process interpretation (colorized)

What still needs work

Mobile layout is rough. There’s basic scaling for smaller screens, but no proper responsive design yet, there's also a problem with some glyphs not rendering properly (overbar notation for roman numerals). I'm aware of this bug and working on it ;p
Virtual + physical keyboard syncing is still in progress.
I want to add way more math commands like isFibonacci, log, ln etc.

What kind of feedback I’m looking for

As mentioned earlier, the point of documenting this is to improve through feedback. So if anything about the UI, command structure, or overall experience feels off I’d really appreciate you pointing it out.

Even small stuff helps :D

What’s next

INTDEC is in its “v1” state now - functional, but not done.

I’m planning to revisit it soon and do a round of cleanup and polish based on how people interact with it.

Thanks for reading! I know it's not a practical tool, but it was genuinely fun to build.

Hopefully someone out there enjoys messing around with it as much as I did while making it :D