rhonsby / truckspy

TruckSpy

Demo

A service that tells the user what food trucks might be found near a specific location in San Francisco. This project is my submission to Uber as part of the application process as a full-stack engineer.

Data provided by DataSF.

Technologies

Rails, Backbone.js, jQuery, PostgreSQL, Bootstrap, and Google Maps API

Rails

I chose to use Rails for the back-end because the framework is very RESTful and goes great with Backbone.js. It takes minimal time setting up and allowed for me to focus on what was really important to create my MVP. Ruby, the language that Rails is built upon, is highly expressive and easy to read. This makes it easy to share code with both non-technicals and people who are new to the language.

Backbone.js

Backbone is lightweight, and easy to use in conjunction with Rails. Although the standard Javascript libraries are great at what they do, without structure, building a complex web app would be fairly difficult. Backbone is a compact front-end framework that provides invaluable structure without getting in your way.

PostgreSQL

Rails comes default with SQLite and requires very little configuration in development; however, I've always had a better experience with PostgreSQL especially because it's the type of database that Heroku uses. It's snappier and feels more reliable. Using the same database as production will safeguard me from some errors that may come up.

To Uber

Hi Uber team! I chose to do the food truck challenge because I feel like it would be something fun and useful to a lot of people in the city.

As you can probably see by the technologies I decided to incorporate, I chose to implement the full-stack technical track. I really enjoy putting effort into each layer of an application and find it just as much fun connecting the stack as it is developing for each layer.

Other Work

Hackstarter

Hackstarter, a Kickstarter clone, was built to showcase my abilities as a full-stack developer. It's a crowdfunding web app that solves a problem all too common for start-ups: the lack of investors. It's not enough to just have a great idea if you don't have the means of execution. Innovation is what our society thrives on, so Hackstarter tries to help provide those means.

GitHub | Demo

Links

You can find my portfolio website at http://roberthonsby.com.

My resume can be found here.