This was a simple project to record and calculate the scores of card games and board games. The React app is pretty simple, but the project gave me a chance to explore a few technologies I hadn’t used much:

• Websockets
• Amazon Alexa Skills

Design

This was a React app and Node server hosted on Heroku. It also provided an API that powered an Alexa Skill. It was backed by Mongo DB (because that was cheap and easy).

I experimented with a Domain-Driven Design approach here, using event sourcing. The domain code was shared between the client and server as they both

Highlights

• I was able to produce a voice-controlled app that would also synchronize with multiple web UIs. Using human-readable (and memorable) ids made this process much simpler than it otherwise could have been.

• This made it through Amazon’s approval process

• Deploying to Heroku directly rather than using git allowed me to have a monorepo without heroku dictating my app structure

Downsides

• It no longer works. I haven’t played as many board games and card games recently, so it didn’t feel worth maintaining.

• Voice interfaces are awkward to test and not fully under your control. The experience when using them is often much clunkier than I’d hope.

• A spreadsheet almost completely solves this problem

• The Alexa development portal was awkward to use (and fairly new)