RANKMAKER

On a random day in February 2025, while getting ready for a shower after returning from a run, a random memory suddenly hit me. A couple of years ago, I made a Formula 1 driver ranking that someone had shared on Twitter. The system fascinated me; I didn't have to think about the exact order from the start or make a tier list. They simply gave me 1vs1 matchups and, based on my choices, a ranking emerged. At the time, I didn't give it much importance, but for some reason, at that instant, it came back to me. During the shower, I kept thinking about it. I had no idea how to program, but I was obsessed with AI. As soon as I got out of the shower, I opened ChatGPT, played around for a bit, and in a matter of minutes, I had a basic system where I could enter options, compare them in matchups, and get an ordered ranking. I realized there was no website that did exactly that. That was my opportunity. I could spend a week on this and also disconnect a bit from Octopus Control for a change. I was overoptimistic about the "week" part. It wasn't as simple as iterating with ChatGPT. But I discovered more powerful tools like Cursor or Trae. Ever since I discovered the concept of databases, I thought I would first make everything work locally and later connect it to a database. But my idea of "working locally" was using localStorage as a substitute for a database (without having any idea what I was doing). When I decided to take the leap and implement the database, it wasn't as simple as telling the AI "move this from localStorage to a database." I was stuck for weeks, trying different prompts and structures without success. I got fed up and started from scratch. This time, from the beginning, everything would be connected to a database and I would use PHP. This time it worked; I managed to interact with the database. I redesigned everything. It seemed ready for public launch, but then I discovered a critical error: the 1vs1 matchups didn't work properly. They were poorly implemented. I tried to fix it a thousand times, without success. So I started again. This time, with better file organization (I had a 3000-line JavaScript file). After several versions and more restarts, I decided to use Astro and React (without having much of an idea how they worked). I finished the version and prepared to upload it to the hosting. But when I went to do it, I discovered my hosting was too basic: it only supported PHP and little else. Starting over again. However, I already knew what I was doing (more or less), so in a few days I had another version, this time with PHP again. Much simpler than I had initially imagined, but the essentials were there. On June 6, 2025, RANKMAKER was finally born, after almost half a year of 100% dedicated work to the project, leaving Octopus Control completely unattended. In reality, it was 4 or 5 months of testing, blocks, and restarts, to finally develop everything in a few days with the "correct" approach. Despite things not going at all as expected after publishing, I took away a brutal learning experience just like with EliteBara. I still didn't quite understand exactly how what I had made worked, but the concepts I learned were key to making me interested in learning web development and programming conventionally a few months later.

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