Yet another coding project that has been sitting on the back burner for years, 14 to be exact. How time flies. My original concept was a slick JavaScript based single page web app that would replace the clunky dotNET version of Antibiotic Kinetics.
Per MSDN: “A Single-Page Application (SPA) is a web app that loads a single HTML page and dynamically updates content via JavaScript as users interact with it, eliminating full-page reloads. It offers a fast, native-like experience (e.g., Gmail, Netflix) by fetching only necessary data (JSON) rather than reloading entire pages.”
JavaScript is relatively easy to learn, but very difficult to master. It has many pitfalls and drawbacks. From it’s aggressive coercion to implied global variables, JavaScript code can be extremely bug prone.
JavaScript is a dynamically and loosely typed language, which means type-related errors might only become apparent during runtime, making debugging more challenging compared to statically typed languages.
I’ve tried so many HTML/JavaScript editors over the years it’s ridiculous. Many I paid good money for, none ever worked for me. Here are a few that I can remember trying, buying, and failing:
AntechinusBlueGriffinDreamweaverKomodoNetBeansNSB App StudioRadPHP
There was an online editor that worked pretty well (up to a point), but so much time has passed I’ve forgotten its name.
This time around I used Visual Studio Code, the price was right (free). It does a nice job of color formatting the code, plus a few bug insights, albeit very few. Because JavaScript is a interpreted language, it does not have a compilation step. You don’t know if you have made a syntax error until you run the entire application. The Chrome console and Claude AI were helpful in sussing out the bugs.
So far I’ve only coded the prospective half of Antibiotic Kinetics. There is no serum level analysis methodology (yet?). I’m calling it Antibiotic Kinetics “Express”, to differentiate from the full dotNET web app, renamed Antibiotic Kinetics “Classic”.
When I paused this project 14 years ago, the jQuery mobile library (now deprecated) was the shiz. I kept it, giving the UI an iPhone classic look with rounded buttons and nice looking dialogs. The retro aesthetic evokes a warm sense of nostalgia:
I think the app icon is a winner too </sarcasm>.
