Hey everyone! I'm just starting out with programming, but I've got this cool idea for an app that's kind of inspired by chess.com. I'm thinking of creating a global live leaderboard that ranks users based on their scores from individual private sessions (not just peer-to-peer matches).
Since this is just a personal project, not for school or anything, I'd love some help with a few things:
- What programming language would be best to use for this kind of app, especially one that works on multiple platforms?
- Would I need a separate workstation or server to host the leaderboard? If so, what specs should I be looking at?
Thanks so much for any advice!
4 Answers
1. If you’re developing a website, Typescript or JavaScript is the way to go.
2. You can either rent a VPS or use backend services like PocketBase or Firebase to handle data.
Your question is a bit broad, but here are some key points! First, if you want users to play chess through your app, you'll need a way for them to move pieces. For single-player games, client-side scripting works fine, but for multiplayer, you’ll want the client side to send moves to a server.
For long-term storage like leaderboards, having a server is essential. You can run it locally for testing, but not for public access. As for programming languages, JavaScript is solid for web apps; Python would work too, but JavaScript is more common.
Just a heads up, going for a VPS might not be the best choice for storing data unless you're set on managing your own backups. But for computational tasks, VPS is fine. For smaller projects, a standard computer should do the job well until you need to scale up.
So, it sounds like you're primarily looking to create a leaderboard for manually entered scores. If that’s the case, this project isn't too complex—it's actually a bit easier than a basic To-Do app once you figure out how to handle data storage.
You’ll just need some JavaScript to call an endpoint for the leaderboard and a simple way to display it on your site. A backend that can add scores and fetch the top players would be necessary too. The programming language isn't a huge deal since web apps are pretty cross-platform nowadays.

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