A week has passed since I officially completed Peerkada, a project that took me two and a half years to finish. I’ve been pushing away the task of writing this blog, probably as part of the slow process of spinning down from finally closing such a ginormous chapter. But here I am. And even now, the feeling is still surreal.
During Peerkada’s development, I always thought I was at the verge of completion—“just one more thing”—only to realize another issue needed fixing, another feature needed implementing, another chunk of code needed refactoring. Rinse and repeat. The goalpost kept moving, and I kept chasing it. Then, suddenly, after three final commits, I stared at the screen and realized...
I couldn’t think of anything else to add.
It was a weird moment. I had been in a constant loop of "just a little more," and now there was... nothing left. 2,500+ lines of code later (yes, I counted), and Peerkada was complete.
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🎉 Liberation. That’s what it felt like.
But it wasn’t just about finally finishing a project. It was a direct challenge to my own morals—the promise I made to never abandon what I start. I used to hate how some of my peers abandoned projects when the excitement wore off. We had this game programming team once, and our code jams were amazing. But a month later? People got "too busy," lost motivation, or simply... disappeared. Another friend and I wanted to start a SaaS business, but we didn’t even open VS Code with actual intent to build.
So many ideas, so much ambition—and yet nothing truly finished. And for the longest time, I was bitter about it. Bitter at them, bitter at myself for giving up on them too.
That bitterness turned into a vow: I will finish what I start.
And now, I have the receipts. I’m not just talk anymore.
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🔧 Persistence, XAMPP, and a Love Letter to My Past Self
I won’t pretend Peerkada is perfect. It’s built on an ancient tech stack, and I doubt HR will bat an eye at it when I apply for jobs. I’ll be moving on to modern frameworks anyway. I also refactored about 60-65% of Peerkada’s code through AI assistance. I didn't get to personally write a lot of the final version myself, and that kinda hurts.
That said, I won’t discredit myself. I still did a ton of intensive debugging, manual scripting, deployment management, and made it all work—alone. And that matters. But to me, this was a declaration of my individuality.
It was like standing in front of a mirror, staring at my own reflection, and saying:➡️ “Hey, this is me. I finish my shit, bro. You’re not a poser anymore.”
And I love that very much.
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📷 A Piece of Me Left Behind
For the organization that will use Peerkada, I hope it serves them well. I hope it makes their lives easier. I hope it lasts a long time.
And who knows? Maybe one day, I’ll visit my old university in the Philippines. Maybe I’ll drop by the student org I once called family. Maybe I’ll see someone frustratingly trying to center their QR code in the camera to scan their attendance.
And in that moment, I’ll smile—because a part of me will still be there. ❤️
