Algebra Tiles
Algebra Tiles is an interactive web app that helps students visualize and understand algebraic concepts through a fun, game-like interface. It allows users to manipulate virtual tiles to model equations, simplify expressions, and explore mathematical relationships in an engaging, hands-on way.
Challenges
During the development of Algebra Tiles, I faced several challenges that helped me deepen my understanding of React and performance optimization.
Because this project is a web-based game, I had to manually handle drag-and-drop interactions using image blocks, which made rendering and state management more complex. At that time, my limited knowledge of React's lifecycle and re-renders caused performance issues that I had to debug and optimize carefully.
Additionally, while working with mathematical expressions, I used the polynomial package to handle algebraic operations. However, I encountered difficulties converting user input strings into valid formats that the library could interpret correctly. This pushed me to better understand string parsing and data transformation in JavaScript.