when it all crashed

i spent weeks building yondo, a voice calling app with react and agora’s sdk. it started as a simple idea but quickly turned into a maze of failed builds, network errors, and endless debugging sessions.

i tried everything. late nights, countless console logs, reading agora’s docs over and over. i thought the problem was with permissions, then with the sdk version, then with react’s rendering. every fix opened up a new issue. it was exhausting.

i reached a point where i stopped coding and just stared at the screen, wondering if i had bitten off more than i could chew. even after testing on multiple devices, rewriting components, and rebuilding the entire project twice, it just wouldn’t work smoothly. audio connections kept dropping or not initializing at all.

but what stung the most was realizing that sometimes effort doesn’t guarantee success. yondo didn’t make it to launch. it failed, but it taught me how complex real-time communication can be and how patience and research matter more than pushing code endlessly.

the vision

yondo was supposed to be simple. a clean voice calling app that just worked. no unnecessary features, just crystal clear calls powered by agora’s sdk and a smooth react frontend. i wanted it to feel like facetime but for the web.

the struggle

i thought integrating agora would be straightforward. initialize the client, join the channel, handle the audio stream. but between browser permissions, token generation, and inconsistent event handling, it quickly turned chaotic. sometimes it worked perfectly on chrome but failed completely on firefox.

even worse, production builds behaved differently from local tests. the app would connect and then crash mid-call. i kept rewriting components to isolate the problem, but it always returned in a new form.

the breakdown

after two weeks of sleepless nights, i hit a wall. every attempt to fix one bug seemed to spawn two more. i was drained, and honestly, frustrated beyond words. i even tried switching to a different rtc library just to see if the issue was agora, but the complexity only deepened.

i realized i had fallen into a loop—fix, break, test, repeat. and the more i chased stability, the more fragile the app became. sometimes, you just have to step back and accept that not every project will go the distance.

what i learned

failure isn’t wasted effort. i learned more from building yondo than from most of my working projects. i now understand real-time audio handling, state synchronization, and the limitations of browser-based rtc far better. i learned how to stay calm when things keep breaking.

moving on

yondo didn’t survive, but it built resilience. i’m not giving up on the idea. maybe someday i’ll rebuild it with a stronger base, better architecture, and more experience behind me. sometimes, failure is just a long detour toward something that will eventually work.

and when it does, i’ll look back at this failed version of yondo not with regret, but with respect for how much it taught me about building, breaking, and trying again.