Rate My Date

New to Montreal? Looking for a place to take your significant other? This year's newbie hackathon team have you covered, with "Rate My Date". No Hotel? Trivago, No Occasion? Rate My Date.

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Inspiration for this Project

Canada is a beautiful country, with lots of places for people to visit, ranging from natural scenery, to the wide range of delicacies, and culture. With large variety, comes a natural sense of indecisiveness, and confusion. So we decided to make an application to help people, narrow down their choices. This way you can make an easy decision as well as take someone with you, because why experience it on your own, when you can share it with someone special, right?

What it does

Our project, basically takes the Google Maps API, and using its data, you're able to search and see the ratings and reviews, for activities, and spots that you may experience with someone special... (specifically "date spots"). This allows you to get the outside opinion of others, in just a few clicks; as well as leave your own, to help others !

How we built it

Splitting our squad of four hackers, we decided to do a front-end, and back-end split. Where we had two of our members, using JavaScript, and their expertise, to iterate and create specific algorithms, and features for our project. They used the Google Maps API, to create a search feature, that autofills locations, as well as a map, and a display that shows the images of the place you want to go to. They also compiled code for the ratings, review, and even a log in system. So you can have a personal experience. This all while the front-end team, developed the website, and themes. Using PUG, a template engine that compiles to HTML, and simplifies the syntax for more efficient, and easy to read programs. The front-end development duo, used CSS to style, and html, to display the website that you have in front of you for convenient accessibility.

Challenges we ran into

Being comprised of mostly newbie hackers, we ran into a lot of challenges, and obstacles to tackle. Even just getting started, we started running into slight problems and complications, as we were deciding on how to split roles, two of our members were much more experienced with coding, and we could either put the more experienced members on back-end to create more advanced features, or have the two more beginner members, to do back-end, and leave the others to do front-end for an easier time. Instead, we decided to take on the challenge, to allow the more advanced coders to do back-end, so we could seriously create a cool and impactful project, while the two others would learn, to create and apply front-end developments to our code. This seemingly simple challenge, really took us for a run, as the front-end developers ended up spending several hours just learning how to format and code in HTML, CSS, while using pug, but eventually we were able to scrape something up (after about 8 hours lol). Our seemingly crazy, and almost goofy idea, started to become more realistic, as our back-end duo finished and started implementing our new features into our website.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Nearing the end of this project, we had completed a lot of our learning, and gained a sense of fluency in a lot of the new languages, and obstacles we had to overcome. This left us with a sense of achievement, and comfort, as despite our struggles, we had something to show for it. Also, this being most of our first hackathon, we're happy we managed to dish out a unique idea, and successfully work on it too (as well as being able to stay awake for to complete it).

What we learned

Honestly, this was really a journey for all of us, we learned many new things, from teamwork skills, to even new programming languages, and techniques. Some of the highlights being, the front-end developers learning how to code in HTML and CSS completely from scratch, in the span of 6 hours, and the back-end developers learning about the Google Maps API, and how to operate through it, and implement it (also starting from nothing).

What's next for Rate My Date

The next step for Rate My Date, would be to further polish the code, and make sure that there are no bugs, as it was a pretty ambitious project for 24 hours. We were all very excited to be making this idea come true, and are looking forward to its future changes, and potential.

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