Creating a web application from scratch is the hardest part of development process. There are so many decisions to make like which build tool should I use?, which spec runner should I use?. I usually find myself suffering while checking library compatibility problems -That was the case for all JS developers couple years ago, check out the JS fatigue-. Today I succeeded to dodge this pitfall by bootstrapping my app with Create React App. This repository has single purpose: Create React apps with no build configuration.

By the help of Create React App, today I have started my data visualization tool for Trello. My goal was to visualize completed tasks against their categories on the pie chart. I created small steps to follow in my mind:

• Get data from Trello
• Extract the information from this data, namely extract Done Weekly or Done Overall columns
• Extract labels from each card on the given column
• Adapt data for the visualization framework(ChartJS in this case)

Since my table is public, a simple GET request to https://trello.com/b/[boardId].json address fetched my precious data. Since the list’s names were Strings like Backlog > Tools, I have used enum-like objects to prevent typos;

export const listNames = {
  BACKLOG_OTHER: "Backlog > Other",
  BACKLOG_TESTING: "Backlog > Testing",
  .
  .
  .
}

After this point, I created simple key-value pair to keep these listNames with their Ids. In order to create this pair, I needed to initialize class with the board data. I wanted this class to be singletone assuming that data will stay the same. I have overthought and I have failed to write testable code. Test implementations started to have huge beforeEach blocks with data initialization. Coupling between modules increased and I have failed to dodge this pitfall. After struggling for an hour, I realized that I am on a mud. I stopped being stubborn and removed whole class, just kept the tests. Eventually, I found another solution I can use for this case.

Every software crafter has been through this problem at some point. Accidently, we start to inject more meaning on a simple class. That simple class gets used by other developers for multiple purposes. At some point, abstraction becomes impossible. We must stop being stubborn and take a break to get rid of tunnel vision.

Being able to realize that I am not going anywhere, saved my day. I have successfully published an alpha version on https://gracious-booth-c323f1.netlify.com/.