Note for readers - First of all, thanks for taking a look at my project! This project is based on a small startup idea I had, which I might develop more in the future, but for now it is on hold. Everything in this repo totals about 3 weeks of work total in my free time, which is not a lot of hours. There are obviously a lot of incomplete sections, unpolished edges, and completely missing features. Any feedback would be appreciated :)

Burgeon

Burgeoning.me

Web App to track career growth, skills development, and learning over long time periods, initially focused on Software Developers.

Overview

The inspiration of this project so far is that I've been wanting to use something more powerful than a simple to-do list for tracking professional development. This applies to far more than just learning skills - I want to be able to set up a group of things to do for promotion to Senior Engineer, like "Lead 3 Projects" or "Design a New Microservice Architecture". There are tons of really detailed resources out there which provide a great set of learning resources for a specific skill, but it is often very hard to both use these (often forking a GitHub repo to keep track) and hard to find them, especially when they are all in different places.

Design Overview

Screenshot of a few of the current designs (the actual content will look completely different, this is just a placeholder):

A Track is a set of goals. Each Track will have an expected completion time (adjustable, maybe slow-med-fast-custom). Each track will have an associated reward, which initially will be points, but can turn into something we verify and provide real, physical rewards for.

Each Goal can be anything that is achievable. For example, in a "Learn Python" Track, you might have a Goal of "Learn Built-In Data Structures" and in a "Get Promoted" track, you might have a goal of Learn Project Management Skills. Each goal will be related to any number of Tasks.

Each Task is a single, time-trackable action which is part of a larger goal. This might have a time estimate, but it shouldn't be required. Each task has a Notepad which is basically a text document which you can use to take notes. This can be a simple text editor, with the only really important features being lists with checkboxes, embedding links, and maybe being able to do block quotes. I don't necesarily want this to just be a simple Markdown editor since we want this to be super-accessible to non-developers.

Frontend Views/Design

Header/Menu with
Home page which shows
View which

MVP features

Backend

Frontend

Other

Some amount of curated goal tracks for different specialties, with tips for each step (similar to the many "Learn Machine Learning" or "Google Interview Prep" repos).
Marketing website

Release features

Share tracks with other users.
Gamification of goals with social charts/interaction
- Points for basic stuff - fill out your profile, follow tutorial.
- Points for daily login and checking in on your progress.
- Points for completing (curated) goals.
- Supportive messages for gaining points, super-extra-mega supportive messages for people struggling or aren't making progress.
Real rewards for achieving (curated) goals - something cheap but substantial. Maybe swag.

Monetization features

HR Integration for employers (Private Tracks)
- Employee account will get access to the private Tracks the employer's admin account gives them access to.
- Employer portal to create development tracks, add employees (either as new users or add access to existing user), and additional admin users. Additional page to manage rewards for track completion.
Sponsored public Tracks
- Set of goals with a sponsor-provided reward or point system.
- Sponsor will have their logo on every page.

Development

Instalation/Deployment

On EC2:

Install base dependencies

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install -y build-essential
sudo apt-get install -y python3 python3-pip
sudo apt-get install -y nginx
curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_8.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

Set environment variables (should be done from deploy script)

export FLASK_APP=burgeon
export FLASK_DEBUG=1

Clone project

sudo mkdir /burgeon
sudo chown ubuntu /burgeon
cd /burgeon
git clone https://github.com/danielvinson/Burgeon.git
(Enter GitHub credentials)
sudo chown ubuntu -R Burgeon/
cd Burgeon

Install backend dependencies

sudo pip3 install --upgrade pip
sudo pip3 install /burgeon-server/requirements.txt

Initialize the database

cd /burgeon/Burgeon/burgeon-server
sudo -E python3 -m flask create_db

Install frontend dependencies and build the frontend

cd /burgeon/Burgeon/burgeon-client
sudo npm install
sudo npm install --global webpack
sudo node_modules/.bin/webpack

Start the development server with: (change port to whatever you want it serving on)

cd /burgeon/Burgeon/burgeon-server
sudo -E python3 -m flask run --host=0.0.0.0 --port=8080

You can start a production server by first updating the nginx configuration with a proxy_pass to the port you are running your flask server on. I will include instructions for this later.

Running the tests

Server

Run:

cd /burgeon/Burgeon/burgeon-server/
pytest

Client

Built With

Backend

Flask - Python Web Framework
SQLAlchemy - Python ORM
Flask-SQLAlchemy - Flask+SQLAlchemy integration
Bcrypt - Password hashing library
Flask-Bcrypt - Flask Bcrypt integration
Flask-Login - Flask login/session handler
SQLite Database (will probably be updated to Postgres for production)

Frontend

React - Frontend Framework
Redux - State manager
Rematch - Redux wrapper for better syntax/defaults
Webpack - Build Tool
Jest - Testing
Enzyme
Chai

Author

Daniel Vinson - GitHub Profile

See also the list of contributors who participated in this project.