107
kurtr
7y

My first project and the reason I learnt to code. I was a manager at a supermarket and wanted a discount card for the old people so just wouldnt have to walk to the tills.

First I wrote hello world, then a calculator and then a loyalty card system for my store. It was wildly successful and the fact my scrap code even ran is a miracle. Shortly after launching it in my store I met a like minded investor with an actual dev team hooked it up to a web service and I spent the next 3 years rolling it out nationally to 480 stores. It's still running today.

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  • 6
    Very inspiring, man. Congratulations 👍
  • 3
    @Jop- I had 16 tills(Checkouts). We gave pensioners 5% discount any day of the week but it required a manager's over ride on the pos. I spent A LOT of my day giving these discounts it was a pain the ass
  • 4
    Well that escalated quickly...
  • 2
    @sslPoodle @NoLicense Not really - if you can code a calculator you can code most most things. It covers the fundamentals of a program (input, memory, output). Also a points/discount system is really piss (points++) - the only hurdle was figuring out wtf a sdk was and how I could import the sdk for the barcode scanner.

    The real brain fuck was when it became a real thing and had to consume web services and that SOAP is not soap but fortunately there were seasoned veterans willing to help.
  • 3
    We tend to put so much emphasis on "best practice" and the "right way" to do things it often prevents us from getting started or even achieving proof of concept. I wrote the initial "system" in 3 days (I spent a week on the calculator) and yes the code was fucking scary but it was effective in the terms of it did what it needed and nothing more, I'm not sure I would be able to pull off the same feat now simply because my personal pride and doubt about my implementation would slow it down.

    All I knew when I wrote it was that it worked and that was enough for me. I didn't have the tenacity to judge my approach.

    They were simple times.
  • 1
    Did you make bank $$$
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