I Chose Buffalo for a 48-Hour Hackathon. Then I Had to Figure Out How to Use It
I had worked with Go before. I had also worked with Bitcoin. What I had not worked with was a Go web framework. Then came a 48-hour GreenTech hackathon at Zone01 Kisumu. Naturally, I decided to change that. Not because I had carefully compared every Go framework and found the perfect one. Not because I had years of experience building production applications with Go. I simply researched some of…
The author decided to participate in a 48-hour GreenTech hackathon at Zone01 Kisumu, despite having no prior experience with Go web frameworks. After researching beginner-friendly backend frameworks, they chose Buffalo. However, this decision would later cause some challenges.
The hackathon focused on problem tracks like BSF farming and organic waste management. The team chose the waste management track and developed RegenFeed, a platform connecting waste producers with farmers. They divided the work, with the author handling the backend core, including database, authentication, and migrations.
While learning Buffalo, the author found it magical at times, as it could generate models, migrations, and project structure quickly. However, the author also experienced the framework hiding some underlying processes, both exciting and terrifying. The backend development progressed smoothly, but the frontend team struggled with integrating the backend endpoints.
Conflicts arose as the frontend team proceeded without waiting for the backend. The author and a teammate worked together to debug the issues, putting lunch on the line for help.
Ultimately, the MVP of RegenFeed connected waste producers and farmers, allowing waste producers to list organic waste and farmers to accept it. The integration between Buffalo and the Svelte frontend was one of the challenges faced during the hackathon.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
