pcole

London | Night Zookeeper | Full Stack Javascript Developers | ONSITE | Full-Time

We are looking for 2 talented full stack Javascript developers, one junior, and another more senior, to join our small but passionate team.

Night Zookeeper is a children's story and series of educational games/products that we've created with the aim of inspiring children to develop their creativity, encouraging them to become creators rather than consumers of digital content. Our core product is an online educational game used in thousands of schools around the world with a focus on creative writing. We are also planning a fun consumer facing product.

Server side, we use Node.js and are currently building a GraphQL API to replace/complement our old REST backend and are doing some work on analysing the students writing to detect spelling and grammar mistakes. Client side we use React/Redux. We make heavy use of Canvas, SVG and various game/animation libraries to make the experience super fun for kids.

There is no shortage of interesting projects to work on, with lots of scope for experimentation with the latest technologies.

We offer competitive salaries and stock options.

To apply, simply email [email protected] with your CV/Github or whatever else you think will help us understand who you are, where your passions lie and what you are looking for in your career.

Here's a more in depth Job Ad: https://unicornhunt.io/jobs/full-stack-javascript-developer-... Our website: http://www.nightzookeeper.com

Night Zookeeper (http://www.nightzookeeper.com) | London ONSITE | Full stack JS developers

Night Zookeeper is an educational game/platform that is used in thousands of schools across the world to inspire children to write, read and develop their creativity. It is based on the story of the Night Zookeeper which will soon be published as a series of 6 books. Here is a quick video overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pABeas_8LEY

We are a small team of 5, looking to take on at least two new developers in the coming months to help us improve our educational offering and build brand new consumer facing games and products, mainly on the web, but we are also looking at native apps and physical products.

We use Node.js on the server alongside various databases (Mongodb, Postgresql, Redis). We are introducing a new Graphql API and dabble in NLP to analyse the students work. On the client, we are refactoring our code base to use React/Redux, we also make heavy use of canvas and various animation techniques to bring the site to life for the children.

We are looking for good javascript developers that relish working as part of a small team and have experience with web based games, or at least complex web apps. You will be working on products that evolve rapidly and most importantly, help make a difference to kids in schools across the world.

Salary will depend on experience/skills, stock options can be available if you decide that you'd like to join the team long term after working with us for a few months.

Please contact [email protected] for more information.

If I had time to get something up and running where the html could be rendered on both client and server using the same code base in the early stages of a project then I would.

It all depends on the project of course but currently here is the order in which I tend to do things:

1 Write an api

2 Write web/mobile apps to consume it

3 Optimize by pre-rendering the html when needed if the project becomes popular enough or if it really needs to be crawled.

We put this together one afternoon because it was fun and quick to do. We were looking into generating colours for our site and logo that would somehow be different for every visitor. We thought about this but then realised it wouldn't be that practical. If it can inspire someone to do something similar but more useful then that's enough for me :-)

Thanks! Its crazy how many little typos and issues get exposed by the HN crowd even for a tiny experiment like this :-)

Thanks. That was part of the problem. Turns our $.get wasn't parsing the response data as JSON in firefox. fixed now!

Hey guys. Sorry its not working, its on a shared hosting, hosting it somewhere else right now. Its just a bit of fun really, grabs the first 3 numbers of your ip, turns that into an rgb color then generates a color pallet.

Woop woop :-) I am a co-founder in one of the 16 teams. These last three days have been amazing. I am at work with a hang over this morning and it feels like It was all just a dream. I am very much looking forward to meeting all the other teams I didn't have time to talk to yet and of course let's not forget the 14 that didn't get in.

Now the real work begins!

This is great. Best canvas fireworks I've seen so far! I was thinking of building something like it for a while... The last particle engine type thing I built was with the old DirectX 7 back in day (well maybe 10 years ago). Just out of interest, how much time did it take you to build this demo? (assuming the author is around)

I feel the same way about this. It makes me sad and I can't even envisage getting a reader. As the obvious target for this kind of gift (techie that loves reading), I have asked all my friends and family to not even think about getting one for me. I dream of having a whole room full of books, a confortable sofa and a fire place in the future!

One of my fears is that digital books will change people's reading habits, by having too much choice available instantly it seems too tempting to start many at once and not finish any. With time this could result in books & stories becoming shorter and this can't be a good thing.

I do however realise that these feelings of mine do not make much sense and that one day, when the book I want to read isn't available in a physical form, I will have to surrender and get the digital version. I agree that that day will be a sad one, but many people felt (and still feel) that way about vinyls, and it hasn't prevented the mass from evolving and embracing the new capabilities of the new formats.

I can imagine a future where the books as we know them now are just one specific (and old fashioned) way to tell a story, in a world full of other formats and possibilities. I believe that change must not be feared and as long as the whole world doesn't go crazy, we should be fine :-)

My thoughts exactly as I was reading the post :-)

Same here, I have been using it on a new project since November 2010 and it has been great, following the commits on Github and upgrading when necessary has been relatively easy. This project has really opened my eyes to the power that Git + Github (when used properly) can bring to open source software.

I would also like to add that Fabien Potencier has been amazing and is officially a coding Robot!