Gustav Burchardt

When I was building my website, I grew frustrated with the lack of a simple, component-based, framework for building a static website that required no client-side logic to run. So I built my own.

I worked on IVAN, which is a minimalist markup language that compiles to HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, for one month and ended with a great first version that I used to build my website. I based the language on the component-based architecture of React and Styled components, which allows the developer to create reusable components, such as a navigation bar that is used on multiple pages. This allows to less maintaining of the website, while also allowing for a more rapid development process.

I wrote the compiler in Node.js and provided a CLI for easy interaction with the compiler. The compiler requires no setup/configuration and therefore works with only a single, simple command. Also, I provided a programmatic interface to the compiler for easy building/watching from another script.

When working on this project I learned a lot about file reading/watching and parsing, which is necessary to build the compiler.

Daykeeper is a simple journal application for the desktop, which I made to be able to write journal entries without distractions.

The UI consists of a vertical timeline, in which all of the users log entries are found. They have the ability to add a new entry at the top of the journal. Entries also support custom tags, which was an idea I had to provide tracking and visualization of certain aspects of their day, such as when they woke up, or for how long they exercised on a given day.

Furthermore, the app had the potential for providing value to diabetics, who often measure their blood pressure and wants to write a short note about their mood/behavior prior to the time of measurement. Such a tool would also have allowed them to analyze their behavior and find correlations between certain types of behavior and favorable blood pressure.

The app was built in Electron and React.js with Redux.

Together with two of my close friends I spent almost 8 months prototyping and brainstorming an idea we had for an indie game for the desktop. We were inspired by other recent games, such as Limbo (2010) and The Last Night (2017), and decided to aim for a similar slow paced and gloomy atmosphere. We began development of the game in Unity 3D in August of 2018 and worked primarily on prototyping the visual aspect of the game. I worked solely on the programming part, while my companions worked on graphics and audio. We enjoyed working on this as a side project in our free time but recently had to halt the development due to lack of time.

While working on this project I learned some C# to be able to code in Unity, and I also used my knowledge of the JavaScript Canvas API to rapidly develop simple prototypes in the HTML5 environment.