Popcornly started as a simple question: could I build something I would actually use? I watch a lot of movies and shows, and I was tired of jumping between three different apps just to figure out what was worth watching. So I picked The Movie Database (TMDB) as a data source and started building.
The home view is split into independently loaded sections — Popular, Now Playing, Top Rated, and Upcoming — so a slow response from one list never blocks the rest of the page from rendering. Genre filtering and search sit on top of the same data layer, with aggressive caching since TMDB catalogs don't change minute to minute.
The watchlist
The part that took the most thought was the watchlist. It needs to feel instant when you tap "add," but also survive a refresh and stay in sync if you're signed in on another device — so it runs on an optimistic-update pattern: the UI flips immediately, the request goes out in the background, and a failed request quietly rolls back with an explanation.