What is Jumpydoll?

Jumpydoll is a new platform that makes it easy to start a new side project, learn new skills, and build up a portfolio of work. Whether you're a new CS student or you already love coding in your free time, we make it easy for you to gain experience with industry-standard tools so you can succeed in your future career.

How does it work?

Jumpydoll makes it easy to start a new side project, no matter your level of experience. Pick from one of our project templates based on the type of project you want to create and the language or framework you would like to use. These templates provide the initial setup of the framework so that they can run on Jumpydoll. After you pick a template, Jumpydoll will create a GitHub repository so you can track your changes and share your code. The template also sets up your code to build a Docker image. Docker is a technology that makes it easy to separate the code from the infrastructure, allowing your code to run on Jumpydoll.

After you initialize your project, you can begin working on your project. You can use VSCode in the browser or download the code and use whatever development environment you want. Once you're ready to make a change, you will use Git to update the code on the server. If you're unfamiliar with Git, we'll help you learn the basics since it's an invaluable skill in your future career. After you push your changes to GitHub, we automatically deploy your changes so that they are available publicly. This process, called Continuous delivery (CD), removes the need to run code manually on a server. Docker also facilitates the CD process, as it defines what your application needs to run and how to start running it. Many software teams use CD so that developers can focus on adding new features instead of making manual deployments.

Once your code is on Jumpydoll, it waits in the background for a request. If someone visits your project or makes an API call, your application will start running and serve the request. After a period of inactivity, your application goes back to sleep. Your code only runs when it needs to, so you don't have to pay for a server that is always available.

Don't wait until your work is complete before you push the code. You should deploy your code often so you can see your code in action and get feedback from your friends. While your project is in progress, you can add a description to your project page. Your projects are displayed on your portfolio page, so explain everything you want others to know. Talk about your inspiration for the project, what challenges you overcame, and what you plan to add next. After you've completed a good portion of your project, you can publish it to the project gallery so that it appears in searches and suggestions. Others will start to see your project and admire your work.

Frequently asked questions

What is Jumpydoll?

Jumpydoll is a platform designed for students and hobbyists to build and host side projects. It teaches valuable software development skills and lets users show off their work to a community of builders.

Jumpydoll creates an initial template, and you can start adding code to it. Jumpydoll simplifies the hosting/deployment process using Git and Docker. We run your code while your project is in use, and keep the project asleep when there is no activity.

What types of projects can I host on Jumpydoll?

Jumpydoll is best used to host lightweight web-based projects. These projects can include a frontend website, like React, or a project using a backend web framework, like Node.js, Django, or Spring Boot. Jumpydoll also works well at hosting web APIs that are useful in a variety of applications, such as mobile apps and Discord bots.

Jumpydoll is not great for applications that require a lot of computing power, such as machine learning.

What frameworks do you support?

Jumpydoll provides initial templates for popular frameworks across popular languages. However, we support any language and framework as long as it runs in Docker. The current list of frameworks is below:

• Spring Boot (Java)

• Express (Node.js)

• React (Javascript)

We're constantly adding new framework templates, so let us know if your favorite one is missing.

What if I want to use a framework and you don't have a template for it?

If we don't have a template for your favorite framework, you can replace the existing template with another framework. Jumpydoll uses Docker to run your code, so update the initial code to build a Docker image with your preferred environment. Once the code is built with Docker, Jumpydoll will run it in the same way.

How can I store data with Jumpydoll?

Due to the nature of Docker containers, we don't recommend running a database directly in your application. Any data you save to the filesystem is erased after some inactivity. We recommend using an external database system just like most software teams use. These services ensure your database is always running and keep it patched from security vulnerabilities. Right now, Jumpydoll doesn't provide any databases for you to use, but you can check out some of these database services below:

• MongoDB Atlas https://www.mongodb.com/atlas/database

• Firebase https://firebase.google.com/docs/firestore

• Elephant SQL https://www.elephantsql.com/