It's been 1 year since the idea came up: 1 year of designing, building, developing and testing (and testing an alcohol tracker app is one hell of a challenge, believe me). And now I'm finally ready to present Drinkology to wide public.
It was November'21 when my brother visited Ukraine and we sat down discussing our plans for the future having a drink or two at a bar in Kyiv. Soon enough we started talking about social awkwardness of having drank too much, feeling ashamed the next day for what you said or did, and how none of existing alcohol tracking apps were convenient enough to manage this problem. The kinds of apps for people who donāt plan to quit drinking - rather wish to minimize the negative effect of alcohol on their social life.
Thatās how Drinkology was born - a drinking management tool tailored personally for userās needs. A tracker that helps you find your own drinking limits and control consumption in a way that will eliminate poor thoughts the next morning.
Then the war began, all ongoing work and tasks froze, all our plans and dreams vanished, and for me the development process of Drinkology became the greatest therapy and escape. Being able to redirect all thoughts from constant scrolling newsfeed to the magical world of Xcode - the world of simple constants and complex functions that challenge your brain - this really helped me stay sane in the cruel whirlpool of events.
Now that my family is safe and there is no doubt that Ukraine will be victorious - Iām ready to share the product of these difficult months with the rest of the world. Drinkology is a great app, and over time it will become ever better. But to me, Drinkology is much more than that - it is a symbol of my personal victory over aggressive attempts to break a human spirit.
P.S.
Drinkology was built from scratch with SwiftUI - no ready-to-use libraries exploited (except for RevenueCat, added for simplified subscription management at the very end). Having worked with UIKit framework before on my first app Ā«Box BreatheĀ», it was important for me to learn and implement every detail of SwiftUI in person. For my inspiration and virtual mentorship/guidance I would like to sincerely thank Paul Hudson from HackingWithSwift, Sean Allen for his YouTube channel, Chris from CodeWithChris YouTube channel, as well as Kavsoft - a YouTube channel with outstanding guides on implementing coolest SwiftUI ideas. And of course all the countless stackoverflow users for their questions and answers - all these people allowed me to feel like a part of great community.
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