Alright, so today I’m gonna walk you through this little project I’ve been wrestling with, something I call ‘kabanda’. It’s been a bit of a journey, let me tell ya.
So, What’s This ‘Kabanda’ Thing?
Well, ‘kabanda’ started out as my attempt to get a grip on all the random digital bits and pieces I collect. You know, snippets of code, articles I wanted to read later, weird ideas that pop into my head at 3 AM. My desktop was a disaster, my notes app was a mess. I figured, I need something, anything, to just dump stuff into and maybe find it again later.
I wasn’t looking for some super-duper, all-singing, all-dancing application. Nah, just a straightforward little helper. So, I decided to build it myself. How hard could it be, right? Famous last words.
Getting My Hands Dirty
I fired up my trusty old text editor. First thing, I had to decide how this ‘kabanda’ was going to even work. I spent a good while just sketching things out on paper, trying to figure out the basic flow. I wanted to be able to quickly add stuff, tag it maybe, and then search for it without pulling my hair out.
I started by trying to make the ‘add’ function. Just a simple command, you type ‘kabanda add’ and then paste your text. Sounds easy, but then I had to think about where to store it. Plain text files? A simple database? I went back and forth on that for a bit. I ended up just going with plain text files in a specific directory for each entry, mostly because it felt easier to manage at the start. I figured I could always change it later if it became a total nightmare.
The Messy Middle Part
Then came the searching part. Oh boy. That was where things got a bit… tangled. How do you search through a bunch of text files efficiently? I cobbled together some basic search logic. It was clunky. Super clunky.
I remember spending a whole weekend just trying to get the tagging to work consistently. I wanted to add multiple tags, search by tags, you know the drill. I’d get one part working, and then something else would break. It felt like I was playing whack-a-mole with bugs. My initial simple idea was quickly turning into this sprawling beast of little scripts and functions that barely held together.
- Figuring out a decent way to store the entries.
- Making the search actually find what I wanted.
- Trying to implement tags without it all falling apart.
- Realizing I needed a way to list things, edit things, delete things… the list just kept growing.
I wasn’t using any fancy frameworks or anything. Just some scripting, trying to keep it lightweight. But even simple tools can get complicated when you start adding features like a madman. It was a lot of trial and error, mostly error if I’m being honest for a good chunk of it.
Where It Stands Now
So, after a lot of tinkering, head-scratching, and more than a few moments where I nearly threw my keyboard across the room, ‘kabanda’ is… well, it’s there. It kinda does what I originally wanted it to do. I can dump my notes into it, I can search, I can tag. It’s not pretty, that’s for sure. The command-line interface is as basic as it gets. There are probably a million better tools out there.
But, you know what? It’s mine. I built it. I wrestled with it. And sometimes, it actually helps me find that one snippet I saved three months ago and completely forgot about. So, I guess that’s a win.
This whole ‘kabanda’ process, it really reminded me of this one time I tried to build a custom bookshelf. I had this grand vision, all these fancy compartments and stuff. I started cutting wood, screwing things together. Halfway through, it looked like something a beaver had attacked. It was wobbly, the shelves weren’t quite level. But I kept at it. In the end, it held books. Wasn’t going to win any design awards, but it did its job. ‘kabanda’ feels a bit like that bookshelf. A bit lopsided, a bit rough, but it serves its purpose, for me at least.
Anyway, that’s the story of ‘kabanda’ so far. Just a little peek into my world of trying to make things, and often making a bit of a mess along the way. But hey, that’s how you learn, right?
