Beginnings
We had a completely different idea in the start to build study group finder with Django, but after toiling away on it for ~5 hours, we had to abandon it due to it's complexity and scope.
After some brainstorming, where we came up with a plethora of good ideas, we decided to pursue this. But why?
Rationale
Oftentimes, we find ourselves reading vast quantities of text. This is a very time consuming process. In light of this, we thought to summarize a given text using some text summarization techniques, and then highlight the initial few characters in a word using an algorithm - a technique called bionic reading that appears to increase text comprehension and reading speed for some.
Challenges
To build this software, we combined Java and Python. Even the though the code itself is not greatest, it is good for an MVP.
We faced challenges dealing with PDF's in Java, since a lot of libraries were commercial but eventually overcame that with a clever hack - to use pandoc. Obviously this comes with downsides, but the project works nonetheless.
Learnings
Our main takeaway from this rollercoaster ride was the importance of persistence - as well as the dangers of ambition. It is good to have lofty goals, yet they must be realistic within the constraints. Nevertheless, despite initial stumbles, we persisted and regrouped, coming up and implementing a different idea.
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