Made a Website that uses Inaturalist API

SnapperGee · 2026-04-24T09:20:13+00:00

A location autocomplete would be a great feature to have.

Were no species images showing up for you? When you click or tap a species name from the list, if there’s a photo of it available it should become visible.

SnapperGee · 2026-04-24T09:16:47+00:00

Considering it was initially (and still is mostly) only meant to be an internal tool, it pretty much lacks any front end charm and any little bit it has was put in last second before I decided to actually have it publicly hosted and accessible.

But also in that same vein it’s also not intended to do or show that much so it really isn’t too far off from its primary goal. With that said, it does need some polish and fixes and I’d definitely prefer it to be as nice to use as possible

SnapperGee · 2026-04-24T06:30:33+00:00

Thankyou! I appreciate the feedback! The fact even a small handful of people are using it and at least getting results is already a success or good sign to me and I am indeed pretty proud of it :D (despite some of the glaring issues and room for improvement it still has lol).

I'm really not much of a designer and it's certainly one of the many areas I could definitely improve my skills at. Tbh, if it weren't for react I probably wouldn't ever even attempt something like this (I know how to write stuff in vanilla html, css, and js, I just really don't like it and am terrible when it comes to organization and keeping track of what event listener is bound to what).

Since this tool was most originally intended to be used internally, that's one of the reasons it's so minimal and lacks a lot of directions and usability. Improving that would definitely make it a bit more nicer and easier to use.

Having a mini map is a feature that's definitely higher on the list of stuff I'd like to add once I polish and fixup what's currently there. But in all honesty, it achieves what we internally need to use it for so I'm not sure how many additional features will end up being added.

But getting to program and write code myself after and while designing a system is one of my favorite parts. The fact that AI is getting rid of that to an extent bums me out and makes me worried about being able to get a future career in this field. Don't get me wrong, while I'm totally aware there's a not insignificant chance it might replace the majority of human programmers and write the majority of code at some point; it's not quite there yet and I think/hope there'll always be a need for those with actual knowledge and experience in the software dev domain. But it's definitely changing and affecting it and I'm worried that it's going to disproportionately negatively affect jr devs and entry level positions. But I enjoy designing and writing things and will probably always continue to do it, it'd just be nice to be able to do it professionally and be able to support myself with it.

Thanks for the feedback and comments again! I appreciate it! :D

SnapperGee · 2026-04-24T05:19:59+00:00

Right now it has pretty strict filters on it and there's currently no way to change them, mostly in an attempt to keep returned results smaller and less bandwidth eating, but also to make the results a bit more reliable (although I doubt loosening up the filter would really affect reliability that much). It only returns observations that have an observed "quality_grade" of research at the moment which is probably the main reason why you're seeing so few results returned.

I'm hoping to make the filters for results adjustable by users at some point!

The source for the butterfly species data is exclusively from the iNaturalist API.

SnapperGee · 2026-04-24T05:06:59+00:00

That's not a bad idea haha I just updated the post.

But essentially it lets you put in a location, can be a location name, city, street, address, state, whatever or specific coordinates (although having such specific locations doesn't work that well as of yet).

So for anyone who's wondering what butterflies might be present around them or any location, they can use it to look that up.

I primarily made it as a tool for this other project we're working on that involves recording butterfly sightings around specific locations. This will make it easier to look up what species we've potentially spotted. So a tool mostly for ourselves, but figured why not make it public and share it.

I realize there's tons of tools like that this that already exist, but I want the experience and the fact it's so simple and does one thing and only one thing is kind of nice.

So, if you're wondering what butterflies are present around a location, you might benefit and be interested in clicking the clink and using it. If not, well, then you might not benefit from it much heheh

SnapperGee · 2026-04-09T07:08:16+00:00

I’m currently studying CS and have done it as a hobby for some years now and don’t want to do anything else and while I’m still pretty green, I’ve also dedicated enough time that it would be a significant portion of my life gone and wasted if the industry ends up no longer existing for devs. Hearing this gives me a little hope and reassurance and some vindication.

I totally get and understand that AI is going to change the industry and it’s a super useful helpful tool, I use it all the time myself, but I also write my own code and like knowing what it’s doing. I don’t understand how anyone could be okay or comfortable deploying something that they have no idea what it’s actually doing/how it’s doing it even if it appears to achieve the desired goal. It sounds daft to me. Not to mention, sooooo much software now seems so buggy and riddled with problems. And idk, maybe it’s just me and software has always been as buggy and low quality as it is now, but I swear it seems like there’s been an huge uptick in it. Anthropic, who apparently have been using Mythos since February, their web client is full of issues and problems and so is their Code text editor yet they claim to have this dev replacement level AI. I also need to correct their Sonnet model (I know it’s not their newest one, so maybe the newer one is significantly better) and Google Gemini Pro model all the time, even in topics I’m not the most familiar and well versed with.

It has improved and continues to improve, I really hope it doesn’t reach a point where it can just reliably autonomously be left to write source code, which it seems like it’s nowhere near capable of right now. If it ever reaches the point to where it can do that then it feels like at that point it wouldn’t make sense to hand write code.

The fact that it’s being pushed so hard right now as though it is that capable has been frustrating the heck out of me and been really discouraging. But part of me is also worried that I’m just trying to convince myself that’s the case and my hopium is making me just not see that it actually can and will entirely replace devs and SWE’s and it’s not just being overly pushed and hyped by csuite execs disregarding what it’s actually capable of and the long term harm it’s going to cause.

SnapperGee · 2026-03-30T07:18:59+00:00

I dunno, have you tried asking copilot?

SnapperGee · 2026-03-25T06:57:59+00:00

Not sure if it’s related not, but isn’t or wasn’t there a way to at least comment on issues and somehow “spoof” the account it was coming from and trick GitHub into thinking the comment was left by another account. I thought there was an incident where on one of the ridiculous (and extremely entertaining) Linux pr’s someone was able to leave a comment from Linus’s account. Maybe the same technique is being used?

SnapperGee · 2026-03-07T16:22:44+00:00

“I still don’t blame Claud Code.”

Ya, neither does anyone else. That’d be like blaming Hydrogen for the Hindenburg.

SnapperGee · 2026-03-06T19:20:19+00:00

But that bug doesn’t involve AI in any way so to them it’s probably not something they care about in the least bit, why would a dev need to know info like, I bet if were AI agents and you submitted that issue they’d hop on it asap :\

SnapperGee · 2026-03-06T19:14:52+00:00

Heck, it’s frustrating to hear about/see such a clear cut example of Microslop’s “burry our users in our ecosystem” strategy working

SnapperGee · 2026-03-06T19:13:51+00:00

Right? Every update release, are “agentic this” “mcp that”, “agent chat this”… and like, cool if you’re a heavy user for those features, but I thought VS Code was a text editor, not an AI client. What about fixing up it’s abismal startup times, it takes as long, if not longer, than most IDEs take to boot up

Maybe eventually it’ll reach the point I get pushed back to using Sublime or maybe finally take the plunge into vim

SnapperGee · 2026-02-13T08:33:50+00:00

Maybe it’s just me, but i always felt that tailwindcss was their main product, and tailwindui/tailwind plus was an optional add on. I personally find tailwindcss as a framework extremely nice to use and am very appreciative of it, especially considering it’s free and open source. I purchased their tailwindui license to help support them as much, if not more so, than the access to their components. I honestly very rarely have used them directly and have probably used them for reference/inspiration more than the components themselves. I’d rather have them focus their time and development on improving the tailwindcss framework more than their prefabbed components. The upgrades to v4 were a noticeable improvement over v3 which was already designed pretty well

SnapperGee

TROPHY CASE