What inspired us As UW-Madison students we kept asking the same question — where should I actually work out? With 50+ gyms in Madison and no easy way to compare them, we built the answer. to build the website we used Node.js and Express for the backend, vanilla HTML/CSS/JavaScript for the frontend, and Google Maps/Places API for location features. Our matching algorithm scores gyms against your survey answers across budget, hours, amenities, and distance.
Challenges we faced Merging two developers' code mid-hackathon caused CSS conflicts and broken layouts that took hours to debug. Getting the Google Maps API key working securely through our server without exposing it on GitHub was trickier than expected. And sourcing accurate coordinates and hours for 50+ Madison gyms was tedious but worth it.
What we learned We learned how to build and consume a REST API, handle environment variables securely in production, deploy a Node.js app to Railway, and most importantly — how to collaborate under pressure and ship something real in 24 hours.
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