GSoc Plans and warming up to Hydrogen

Google Summer of Code 2021 is officially in full swing and I can’t wait to add some nifty features to ✨Hydrogen✨. This post is mainly so that I can warm up to the process of writing blogs and share some of my initial thoughts about the codebase.

I think now is as good a time as any to announce the goals for the following 10 weeks. I will mostly be concerned with adding a right panel that shows the room details, member list, member details and an awesome UI to share your favorite room with the world (a.k.a RoomShareView 😃). More information here.

Here is a super long list of things that I’ve managed to do so far:

  • Get an elementary understanding of the codebase ✅
  • Annoy Bruno with unrelated stylistic changes ✅
  • Almost finish up implementing Room Details ✅
  • Set up a super-duper blog ✅

Now onto first impressions and thoughts. Here are some cool things that I’ve noticed about the codebase:

  • Observable(s) and reactive programming make for an architecture that is decoupled and easy to test.
  • Code and tests are located in the same file.
  • A featureful templating engine in just 200 lines of code!
  • Very little dependencies.

One thing that is missing is the documentation. But so far that hasn’t bothered me (thanks to Bruno!). If time allows I’ll also be writing some documentation (🤞).

That’s all I have for now. Hopefully the next blog post will have something a bit more technical 😊.