Baulchino and my experience so far

So, let's start talking about why Baulchino exists. In 2023 I began studying Mandarin. I got into it because of a friend from college. During my time studying, I had a wonderful experience, and I wanted to make any type of software that would help people with their studies as well. I came up with the idea of sharing the HSK books since they were a bit hard to find, as well as creating a tool to know how a hanzi is written according to the stroke order. I also wanted to share some Anki decks, or flashcards, I made to learn some hanzi.

There were not a lot of features initially; I only thought about those in the beginning. With time I experimented more and introduced new things with the help of the community or visitors since most of the new and upcoming features come from feedback suggestions.

Baulchino has taught me a lot

I had to learn a bit more of React and Next.js. I had a grasp of knowledge and had previously used those tools, but Baulchino required me to learn more to provide a better experience for my users.

I also learn about servers, CDNs, databases, how to deploy a real project, how to get a domain (name) for my website, how to buy one, how to configure it, how to index this domain so it shows up on Google or Bing, how to get good positions on any search engine, how to safely deploy something for production, and many more things.

Getting feedback is key; feedback allowed Baulchino to grow more and keep growing. Many of the most popular features came from feedback, and I am always listening to what my visitors say. They even help me with some fixes or bugs they found.

I'm grateful for all the beautiful comments I get, and I thoroughly enjoy reading how Baulchino has helped them even in the smallest of things. This part of reading people's compliments I always feel is a bit narcissistic or egocentric; it's a compliment, so it's normal it may feel like that, I guess, but I really appreciate it and try to stay with my feet on the ground to understand that I can still make mistakes and that Baulchino is far from perfect.

It's hard to add new stuff

I try to add content from time to time, keeping an eye on the new HSK 3.0 books, but there is a lot of content that can be added to Baulchino, but the content creation or distribution is actually the part that takes the most out of this project. I never saw it coming, but I appreciate learning this part and now staying in code hell forever. Not everything is about code in a software project.

I'm not a Mandarin teacher; I'm just a regular student who learns only the basics, so I don't have much capacity to create new materials or resources. However, over time, I have come up with ideas for discovering other useful things that I can implement through a new feature or something similar.

The future of the project

Baulchino will be alive for the very next years, or until I get a copyright claim, maybe. I wish to keep sharing the HSK material for every person that does not have the economic resources to purchase a physical copy or attend lessons in some physical space, as a project that helps students of any kind with digital tools.

I want to keep working at different paces; there will be months with no updates and other months where I'll probably work a lot on new stuff. In the meantime, I'm a bit tired of the project. I love it, but I get tired of working on the same thing over and over, and many of these things are still new to me, so it's a bit overwhelming at times.

I won't abandon this project; it will receive maintenance at least, and I'm always going to remember the nice and not-so-nice remarks about it. This project is so far my magnum opus, the only one I have, but I wish to do more projects, new stuff, never forgetting about Baulchino.

The next features to add are the new HSK 3.0 books and a new audio listening page to further enhance this aspect.