For week W33-2016 Python Project, the broadcaster Taddeimania is working on Tradermon.

Taddeimania is a regular broadcaster on Livecoding. He is from Greenville, United States and is broadcasting on Livecoding for one year! With all the experience, he aims to build Tradermon, a Pokémon Go trading marketplace. The app will enable Pokémon Go players to seamlessly trade Pokémon. Let’s learn more about the project from Taddeimania himself!

What is Tradermon all about? Give us a brief.

In a few words? Craigslist for Pokémon Go. Niantic has said in the past that they will introduce the ability to trade your Pokémon with other players and there are questions as to how you’re going to find the Pokémon you want, how will the trade be facilitated, etc. My site is taking a pretty broad gamble as to how the trading might work, and if I am correct in any of the functionality, it could provide a lot of value for Pokémon Go players to find other trainers who they could work out trades with.

What is the motivation behind the project?

Just a fun project to hack on while I procrastinate on more important projects 🙂 Also, I’m just hoping to provide something useful for people.

Which language/framework/API do you use in your project? What are the reasons for choosing them? Any specific reason?

For the backend, I’m using Python w/ Django and Django Rest Framework and on the frontend, I’m using Ember.js for the single page app. I chose to use these tools because I know them well and would be able to very quickly build something big.

What challenges did you encounter while working on the project?

The project could be a complete failure once Niantic releases trading functionality and it’s nowhere near what I think they’re going to do with it – I’d pretty much throw the app in the garbage if I were far off with my assumptions. I’ve also been struggling a bit with some new Ember Data issues I haven’t forced myself to address in the past with interesting outcomes. Another was bringing free SSL into the app from Let’s Encrypt – wasn’t really a challenge since it was very easy, but I just thought I’d mention it.

Which feature of the project stands out?

It’s a single page app written in Javascript / Ember.js so it’s blazing fast on the frontend. It’s actually kind of a jarring experience because there aren’t really any page refreshes, so when you do something like “Add a Pokémon that I’ll trade for” to your current Pokémon, there is no Submit button or confirmation screen, you just click a + next to your list of Pokémon and they just add themselves.

Did you start the project as a side project or a serious commercial project?

As a side project.

What is the current state of the project?

Early Development – pre-release.

If not complete, how much more time before the first version hits the market?

1 – 2 Weeks of daily development.

What’s your future plan? Or where do you see yourself in the next 5 years?

That question is impossible to answer, the last 5 years of my life have been so crazy and have had so much change there really is no way to say where I’ll be in 5 years. Ideally, I’d like to be working on an application I created with a team I built from capital earned from said application. 🙂

Lastly, what do you think about Livecoding.tv and its future?

I think broadcasting programming is a challenging thing – people who watch those who code on stream are not looking for the same thing as watching someone stream themselves paint a picture or play a video game. There is barely any instant gratification for watching someone stream themselves while programming. So in order for a streamer to keep people watching it has to be more than just a video of themselves staring at a monitor and typing in code – and THAT is a challenge for a lot of developers.

Follow his channel and stream schedule to watch him next time he streams.