Project "PostCATolyptica"

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Published: Updated:

Yes, I believe that there is a cat in Apocalyptica. More interesting, how does life look like after apocalypse. Such a fantasy world that can be possible on Earth is interesting for many of us. Who didn't play games like Fallout or S.T.A.L.K.E.R.?

But the real truth is far from it. Like birds survived from the dinosaur's era, similarly, only cats survived after humans. This reality I tried to reflect on the website. It is a search portal like Google, but on the Internet nothing is left except cats. Stories and facts only about cats. Discoveries and science only made by cats. Do you think it is a fantasy?

It was a crazy idea for a programming jam. Crazy because I chose React for that. Initially only a small ontology with a search was planned. Later I replaced the boring database with an unpredictable algorithm using language processing. Cats are unpredictable, aren't they?

Hence I was developing the AI-powered search algorithm, though, in the limits of jam, it was much easier than it sounds. The site scrapper put history of cat breeds into the database. You type a word. Each story is converted to an array of meaningful words plus synonyms. If the typed word sounds (only sounds!) close to one of these words, then that text is going to be displayed as an output. Unpredictable, right? You should check it out because sometimes it seems very intelligible.

As you remember, everything is done on React! It worked fine with rolling updates. I was excited to release my final version two hours before the last point. I started a build and it hung. I cleaned, restarted, and it hung again. Eventually, I gave up at 4 am, I didn't complete the jam. A week after, when frustration faded away, I went back and split my beautiful idea onto frontend and backend.

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