Inspiration
To prepare for coding interviews, I've spent a lot of time solving Leetcode (data structure and algorithm implementation) questions. Like all coding, it's easy to get stuck on some trivial bug in your code for hours or take the wrong approach entirely and realize it way too late. So I've frequently found myself wanting someone to bounce ideas off of to solve Leetcode problems. Working with someone else also motivates me to keep moving forward regardless of how hard the problem appears. So I suggested this idea to my team as a way for programmers to collaborate with each other in real-time on the same Leetcode problem.
What it does
How we built it
We used React to build a front-end website and Firebase to handle our backend. For our conceptual prototype, we used plain HTML and CSS and experimented with Node.js to create a chat app.
Challenges we ran into
We ran into a lot of problems with React and Firebase documentation and packages being out of date since they are being actively developed at a pretty rapid pace. We also struggled to integrate them together with our limited experience in both.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We're mostly proud of how much we learned throughout the process, especially with our app needing some more complex features like user authentication, backend logic to pair programmers, and a chat app for them to text each other in real-time.
What we learned
We learned a lot about React, Firebase, Node.js, and web development in general.
What's next for LeetCollab
Currently, we have a lot of prototype HTML, CSS, and Node.js work that isn't fully integrated into our React and Firebase final project, which is still in progress. We'd like to spend time integrating all the features we're testing out into this single tech stack. We'd also like to add a competition mode with two teams competing with each other as well as other fun elements to "gamify" the process of solving algorithm questions.
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