A casual way to engage with chess.
I Like playing chess, but I also like fiddling with my phone while not really paying attention to what I’m doing. Unfortunately, if you do this while playing chess on chess.com, you destroy your ELO and lose every game. I built Tactics DB as a way to play the game without any pressure to succeed.
A NoSQL database with more than 6 million puzzles.
TacticsDB has more than 6 million puzzles hosted through Firebase, the same service used in most OAuth systems. I am hosting this for pennies each month thanks to solid optimization and great DevOps.
Kid-written, Mother-approved
Have a look at the function below. This is the move logic for the app, it’s how the app recognizes which move has been played. I wrote this trying to emphasize readability as much as possible, and so I recruited my mother to help me. She knows nothing about code so I rewrote and reworked the function until she was able to tell me exactly what it did without coaching. This emphasis on readability, drawing from techniques I learned from “Clean Code” by the famous Uncle Bob, sets me apart as a programmer.
Try it yourself!
The app still has a modest userbase of enthusiastic chess players. Why not give it a try right here?
Zachary Ringwood 