I almost gave up tonight.
Seriously. One button ā one stupid little button ā had me questioning everything.
Like⦠why the hell am I even doing this?
I had just finished making some of the most fun art Iāve done in a while. The background PNGs were flowing ā seasonal vibes, cosmic cones, neon skies ā the vision was alive and glowing.
Then I got back to coding.
And nothing⦠was⦠working.
I went to dinner riding high. My tracks were playing in the menu, and I felt good.
Came back⦠and āwastedā hours chasing invisible bugs.
Hours lost trying to get that modal button to open the right thing ā again.
I seriously almost scrapped the whole thing. Again.
Backups ready. Rage uninstall pending.
But instead of walking away, I did something differentā¦
I dug deeper.
š§Ŗ Enter: Tools I Didnāt Know I Needed
I started asking myself ā what would a real developer do?
What tools should I have been using this whole time?
That question led me to:
- š§°Ā Node.js
- š»Ā Visual Studio Code
- ā”Ā Vite
Bro. These things are actual upgrades.
Running a local dev server from VS Code? Game changer.
Suddenly my testing is faster. Iām seeing live results. Iām working smarter ā even if I still barely know what Iām doing.
Yeah, Iām wildly out of my element.
Yeah, this is probably stuff some 9th grader knocked out in web class between TikToks.
But for me? This is the climb.
And honestly ā itās starting to feel like Iām doing this more professionally and correctly than ever before.
š” That One Button? It Was a Sign.
I couldāve compromised.
Let the broken button live.
Pushed forward into game mode builds and figured, āeh, Iāll fix it later.ā
But I didnāt. Because it bothered me.
And that decision ā to stop, slow down, and re-evaluate ā mightāve saved my future dev-self from so many headaches.
Iām not just building this app anymore.
Iām reforging it. With intention. With better tools.
With a clearer path forward.
š Progress That Doesnāt Look Like Progress
Right now? The site kinda looks like bunk.
Half the menu buttons are placeholders.
There are debug logs everywhere.
Iāve rebuilt the file structure three times.
But underneath?
- TheĀ audio system is clean, fully Howler-powered.
- TheĀ modal system is modular, future-proofed.
- TheĀ background engine is wiredĀ to seasonal, holiday, and badge unlocks.
- TheĀ XP and badge logicĀ is active, reactive, and savable.
- And most importantly⦠Iām still here.
š Final Thought from the Coneverse
Some nights the cone melts before you get a taste.
But if youāre willing to dig deeper, to rebuild, to learn the toolchain you didnāt know you needed ā that cone?
It comes back triple scoop, cosmic swirled, and dipped in stardust.
The app lives on.
And so do I.
ā JPS Grooves š§






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