EECommittee

Every resource an electrical engineering student needs, in one place.

Pick any subject from the study plan tree and get everything attached to it: material, recordings, staff contacts. Includes a GPA calculator, bilingual Arabic/English search, and a night mode. Volunteer work that has outlived several intakes of students.

Role

Volunteer: mobile and backend

Year

2022–

Status

Shipped

type

Mobile

Built with

React NativeExpoTypeScriptFirebaseZustandReact QueryReanimatedZodCaching

Where to find it

Google Play Source

apps/eecommittee-2.png2400×1350

What it is

The committee had been answering the same questions in the same Facebook group for years: which prerequisites does this subject have, who teaches it, where are the notes, what will my GPA be if this goes badly.

The app turns that into structure. The study plan is a navigable tree, so a subject is a destination with everything hanging off it. Staff details are searchable. The GPA box projects both semester and cumulative results before the semester ends.

It is the longest-running thing I maintain, and the constraint that shapes it is that I am not paid for it. Anything that needs constant attention does not survive.

Challenges

A line taken out, a line put in. The problem first, then what actually replaced it.

Searching in two languages at once

Students refer to the same subject as 'Signals', 'إشارات', or a course code, often switching mid-sentence. Indexing one language means half the searches fail silently.

Every subject carries both names and its code in one searchable field, normalised on both sides. A query in either language, or a code, reaches the same subject.

A campus network you cannot rely on

Students open the app between lectures, in corridors and basements where the connection is unreliable. Every screen hitting the network makes the app feel broken in exactly the place it is used.

The plan tree and staff directory are cached aggressively and treated as slow-changing data, so the app opens instantly from cache and revalidates in the background rather than blocking on a request.

Content that must outlive its maintainer

Study plans change, staff move, and I am one volunteer. An app that needs a code release every time a course is renamed dies the moment I get busy.

All of it is content in Firebase, editable by committee members without touching the app. My job is the client; keeping the data current is theirs, which is the only arrangement that lasts.