Now, this isn&#39;t a very complex project and anyone who&#39;s worked on basic web servers can build this.
<h2 id="but-why-did-i-build-it">But Why did I build it?</h2>
I had this project where I needed to upload images and Firebase&#39;s storage was my first alternative, I kept using it but then the storage quota just asked me to go find a better solution, because the moment you upload over 15-20 images you&#39;ve completed your storage quota and now I&#39;m stuck with a upload code that won&#39;t work and I can no longer upload images to Firebase.
My next alternative was Imgur&#39;s API to upload private images but then that limits me to a certain amount of uploads per minute.
And then I started looking for a service that&#39;d allow me to upload images for the sake of testing and then delete those images after a certain threshold time. Sadly, didn&#39;t find any or I just sucked at searching. Either way my last search result for this was <a href="https://file.io">file.io</a> and it was kind off what I wanted but It would delete the file the moment I requested it for the first time.
So, I ended up building one, for the people who&#39;d like to know what services are being used for this, it&#39;s just a combination of Next.JS for the demo page and Node.JS and MySQL for the back-end. All of this is hosted on Heroku&#39;s free tier for now, since I&#39;m the only one using it and both Heroku and the db would stop working if someone were to overload the API so that&#39;s that. I know it&#39;s not a good solution but it works since I&#39;m the only one using it.
<h2 id="but-without-any-authentication-people-are-going-to-use-up-all-your-storage">But without any authentication, people are going to use up all your storage!</h2>
I understand that but as of now I&#39;m the only person who knows about it&#39;s existence so that&#39;s that and if people do start using it, let me know in the comments so I can add up a full fledged API Key based access system for the API and also move it to a Digital Ocean server to increase the storage and also increase each file&#39;s time to deletion.
Files uploaded from the demo site have a 30 second life and will be deleted after that.
Here&#39;s a link to the <a href="https://tempx.barelyhuman.dev/">demo</a>


Now, this isn't a very complex project and anyone who's worked on basic web servers can build this.

## But Why did I build it?

I had this project where I needed to upload images and Firebase's storage was my first alternative, I kept using it but then the storage quota just asked me to go find a better solution, because the moment you upload over 15-20 images you've completed your storage quota and now I'm stuck with a upload code that won't work and I can no longer upload images to Firebase.

My next alternative was Imgur's API to upload private images but then that limits me to a certain amount of uploads per minute.

And then I started looking for a service that'd allow me to upload images for the sake of testing and then delete those images after a certain threshold time. Sadly, didn't find any or I just sucked at searching. Either way my last search result for this was [file.io](https://file.io) and it was kind off what I wanted but It would delete the file the moment I requested it for the first time.

So, I ended up building one, for the people who'd like to know what services are being used for this, it's just a combination of Next.JS for the demo page and Node.JS and MySQL for the back-end. All of this is hosted on Heroku's free tier for now, since I'm the only one using it and both Heroku and the db would stop working if someone were to overload the API so that's that. I know it's not a good solution but it works since I'm the only one using it.

## But without any authentication, people are going to use up all your storage!

I understand that but as of now I'm the only person who knows about it's existence so that's that and if people do start using it, let me know in the comments so I can add up a full fledged API Key based access system for the API and also move it to a Digital Ocean server to increase the storage and also increase each file's time to deletion.

Files uploaded from the demo site have a 30 second life and will be deleted after that.

Here's a link to the [demo](https://tempx.barelyhuman.dev/)


I created this because I was bored and didn&#39;t have anything creative to make and since everyone seems to be posting theirs.
Here&#39;s a minimal version that gets you the counts of various incidents
<a href="https://corona.siddharthgelera.com/">Link</a>


I created this because I was bored and didn't have anything creative to make and since everyone seems to be posting theirs.
Here's a minimal version that gets you the counts of various incidents

[Link](https://corona.siddharthgelera.com/)


It&#39;s hard to not talk about this topic, I&#39;ve always been the kind of person who&#39;d prioritize learning over everything and have no regrets. I&#39;ve done that while building most of my projects. Better project structures, easier ways to implement a certain functionality while maintaining a clean code, all of these have come after a lot of trial and error and there&#39;s still times where I&#39;d give up on clean code just to get a hacky version of my idea up and working.
But this post isn&#39;t supposed to be about learning, this post is about why Development tools are an important part of a developer&#39;s life and why he should focus on growing up to be a power user of every tool that exists in his dev toolchain. People who think that this is supposed to be obvious, you&#39;ll find out why I&#39;m writing this.
I&#39;ve seen people use VSCode like they were using notepad++. No hard feelings towards notepad++ but the whole point of having something feature rich like VSCode is to make it easier and faster for you to work with. People seem to be surprised when I use <code>multi-cursors</code> in the editor to edit multiple lines of code.
The code editor is not the only tool that I&#39;d like to focus on. Database GUI Clients, Various Browser debugging environments, Platform specific IDE&#39;s (Android Studio / XCode),Deployment Tools, CI/CD all of these have a ton of features that can help you automate and if not automate , maybe just make it easier and sometimes also faster for you.
Even though I am trying to convince you to use tools, I don&#39;t want people to stop going through the raw basics of each of the technologies that they use the tool for. I still want you to learn to use something like <code>vim</code>, I still want you to learn raw sql queries, you should already know why the linters need to exist.
Examples
<ul>
<li>Instead of Browsing for a file through the file tree, use the super search provided by your code editor.</li>
<li>Use a GUI to manage your remote and local database instances instead of writing redundant create/delete queries for it. The GUI tool does allow custom queries and the tables are a visually a lot more pleasing to go through (Doesn&#39;t mean , you stop learning SQL/NOSQL queries all together and just depend on the tool)</li>
<li>Learning to use a Git Diff tool like <code>Sublime Merge</code> or <code>Git Kraken</code> to make merge conflicts and git history tracking a breeze. (Doesn&#39;t mean you shouldn&#39;t learn <code>git</code> basics)</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="tldr">TLDR</h2>
<ul>
<li>Learn the basics (Advanced topics too, if you can) of all the technologies that you use.</li>
<li>Find tools that suffice to your requirements and don&#39;t use heavy tools if you&#39;re not going to use it&#39;s features. You are just wasting your system memory in most cases.</li>
<li>Grow to be a power user of each tool you use, learn the keyboard shortcuts, if the tool can be configured, figure out various ways to configure it. If the tool has a plugin system, maybe even build a plugin to know about it inside out.</li>
<li>Don&#39;t skip the 2nd point!</li>
</ul>


It's hard to not talk about this topic, I've always been the kind of person who'd prioritize learning over everything and have no regrets. I've done that while building most of my projects. Better project structures, easier ways to implement a certain functionality while maintaining a clean code, all of these have come after a lot of trial and error and there's still times where I'd give up on clean code just to get a hacky version of my idea up and working.

But this post isn't supposed to be about learning, this post is about why _Development tools_ are an important part of a developer's life and why he should focus on growing up to be a power user of every tool that exists in his dev toolchain. People who think that this is supposed to be obvious, you'll find out why I'm writing this.

I've seen people use VSCode like they were using notepad++. No hard feelings towards notepad++ but the whole point of having something feature rich like VSCode is to make it easier and faster for you to work with. People seem to be surprised when I use `multi-cursors` in the editor to edit multiple lines of code.

The code editor is not the only tool that I'd like to focus on. Database GUI Clients, Various Browser debugging environments, Platform specific IDE's (Android Studio / XCode),Deployment Tools, CI/CD all of these have a ton of features that can help you automate and if not automate , maybe just make it easier and sometimes also faster for you.

Even though I am trying to convince you to use tools, I don't want people to stop going through the raw basics of each of the technologies that they use the tool for. I still want you to learn to use something like `vim`, I still want you to learn raw sql queries, you should already know why the linters need to exist.

Examples

- Instead of Browsing for a file through the file tree, use the super search provided by your code editor.
- Use a GUI to manage your remote and local database instances instead of writing redundant create/delete queries for it. The GUI tool does allow custom queries and the tables are a visually a lot more pleasing to go through (Doesn't mean , you stop learning SQL/NOSQL queries all together and just depend on the tool)
- Learning to use a Git Diff tool like `Sublime Merge` or `Git Kraken` to make merge conflicts and git history tracking a breeze. (Doesn't mean you shouldn't learn `git` basics)

## TLDR

- Learn the basics (Advanced topics too, if you can) of all the technologies that you use.
- Find tools that suffice to your requirements and don't use heavy tools if you're not going to use it's features. You are just wasting your system memory in most cases.
- Grow to be a power user of each tool you use, learn the keyboard shortcuts, if the tool can be configured, figure out various ways to configure it. If the tool has a plugin system, maybe even build a plugin to know about it inside out.
- Don't skip the 2nd point!


Covid Tracker Attempt