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Taskbarter – Exchange Tasks for Free!

Mohsin Hayat on May 20, 2020

Project Overview During the lockdown, I was working on Taskbarter, a platform where people can barter (or exchange) tasks for free. So, ...
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godcrampy profile image
Sahil Bondre

That's a really cool project 😎. Is the code open sourced?

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Mohsin Hayat

Thanks Sahil 😎

Currently it is not. Initially the repository was public then I got feedback from people that I should keep the code hidden (for security and privacy reasons). What do you suggest? Should I make it open source?

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Peter Street

Security through obscurity is no security at all. Hide anything that has sensitive data (ignore / abstract / use configuration details for api keys and login and such - you do have a CI pipeline with secret handling, don't you?), but make the site public and open. You'll learn more from it too, because as people use it, they can submit bugs, issues and (hopefully) pull requests and ideas for improvements.

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Sahil Bondre

Please make it open source. There is a lot to learn from the code as it is complete full stack. Regarding privacy, you can put the sensitive file into .gitignore like the ones with config data.

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Mohsin Hayat

Okay, I'll update the files and make it public again. I'll do it ASAP.

Thanks

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Francesco

Hey Mohsin! Congrats nice work! I was surfing from mobile and I've found a nice and smooth UX! Nevertheless the idea the exchange task is really valuable! Could I ask you how did you build the messages section? Have you used any specific library?

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Mohsin Hayat • Edited

Thank you so much Francesco. It really means a lot.

I designed and developed the messaging section from scratch. Although, the design inspiration is from Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger.

The fact that it looks good on Mobile is because I separated the mobile components in React and it worked flawlessly. The messages and notifications are sent/received using the npm library: Socket.io. Rest is all custom-built.

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Francesco

I see, thank you for the explanation! Great job, again!

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Isha Gupta

Hi Mohsin, Congratulations, This is a cool idea and you have done a good job in executing it as well. Keep up the good work. Whats the idea behind earning points for people signing up for this? Where can they use the points or is it for rating purposes?

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Mohsin Hayat

Thank you Isha for the feedback 👍

When you do a task, you'll receive Barter Points, you can use these points to add tasks on Taskbarter.
The points are just representing how much work you've done on Taskbarter and how much can you receive.

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Peter Street

Was browsing through and registered. It's a nice site, but it's missing a few major parts to actually negotiating (Or, at least, it's not clear on how that would work). So someone submits a task - the only way I can see of getting any further information on this is to 'submit a proposal'. In reality, in its current state, the level of information is wildly insufficient to actually give any idea of how much time/effort would be involved, so further questions would be useful - and putting those questions into the question area would then benefit anyone who was looking at submitting that task.

It's a nice, clean site though, and it runs pretty well from a pure UI basis.

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Mohsin Hayat

Very thoughtful feedback. Thanks a lot.

Yes you're right, the information is insufficient and the duration and complexity must be shown there. The problem is "Who's going to decide the complexity?". I think that the complexity is subjective and the task poster cannot say that this "This task is difficult" or "easy".

I'd appreciate if you help me brainstorm a solution. Should I put a dropdown at the "Add Task" part where user can specify the complexity (easy, medium, hard or something similar)? What would be a better approach?

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Peter Street

That's a great question. I'd imagine something like a 'comments' section, a request for clarification or similar, with the ability to update the request and have an in-public clarification or RFC (Request for Comment) interaction.

My thoughts would be that if someone puts something exceptionally unclear (Example: "Graphics Design some Android App UI screens") which could be trivial (Put some forms together) or extremely complex (Design a UX to cover a multi-page interaction with good principles) then those considering doing it could interact with the author of the question to clarify it before committing to actually putting in the work.

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Mohsin Hayat • Edited

Yes that's a good suggestion. I didn't think about RFC, brilliant idea 👍👍. I'll add this to my to-do list and start the implementation ASAP.

Users will be able to clarify the requirements in a publicly available comment section on the task.

Thanks a lot 👌

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Mohsin Hayat

Repository now available publicly: github.com/taskbarter/main

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Lucas Queiroz

Really nice work! Congrats!!! The UI looks great as well!

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Mohsin Hayat

Thanks a lot Lucas!! ❤️

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Roy Toledo

Nice! How long did it take you?

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Mohsin Hayat • Edited

Thanks Roy ❤️

I started at the start of April and it took about a month to complete.

I'm still improving the features and solving bugs. Here's the changelog: docs.taskbarter.com/about-release/...

My contribution graph:
Task Page

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Gaurav Saini

Really nice work 👍. Love the idea of exchanging tasks.

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Mohsin Hayat

Thanks Gaurav! ♥️

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Ashraf Hussain

That's really a great project. I saw your code in github. I think I will be better if you make this project using microservice architecture for scalability purpose

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Mohsin Hayat

Thanks Ashraf, really appreciate your suggestion. I'm working on micro-services in my other projects and will shift Taskbarter to micro-service architecture soon.

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Roy Toledo

I decided to give it a shot and register, but I can't... :(
Always getting the same error (i think it was username)
I did try to login with FB, but it just brought me back to the registration page.

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Mohsin Hayat

I'm so sorry for the bug. I'll look into this as soon as I can.