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“Yes-Code” Projects

When:
2024
What:
Web Design & Development
How:
Vanilla HTML + CSS + JS, Xano, OpenAI

Challenges

  • JavaScript has a steeper learning curve than I expected.
  • Not getting distracted by shiny objects – frameworks are cool, but it's important to master the basics first.
  • It's not always easy to decide if it's better to build something using custom code or a no-code platform. There are serious tradeoffs.

Lessons learned

  • ChatGPT and tutorials are lifesavers, but you must be able to understand the code you're getting from these sources – otherwise you shooting in the dark.
  • Even when you don't need to use custom code on a project, knowing how to code makes no-code development much easier, faster, more assertive.
  • Combining code with no-code is a way to find the best of both worlds for a project.
  • No-code tools are a great way to learn tech skills that would be harder with traditional coding (e.g. using Xano to manipulate databases and APIs);

As I progressed in my No-Code journey, I often encountered situations that required some custom code. This can be quite a roadblock, so I set out to overcome it.

Most of what I've done with code has been exercises from The Odin Project – the best course I've tried so far. Here are the two projects where I ventured beyond solving tricky puzzles.

Propagandon't

In this project, I combined traditional front-end (HTML, CSS and vanilla JS) with no-code back-end (Xano), plus OpenAI's API.

This website is basically an AI wrapper that takes a neutral fact from the user and returns two headlines that twist this fact into extreme left and right-wing propaganda.

The idea came from a realization of just how silly propaganda sounds if you pay attention. Extremism of any kind is ridiculous. Why not make fun of it?

Xano handles the interaction between the front-end and OpenAi, and stores user inputs and headlines on a database.

Rock, Paper, Scissors

This was initially an exercise from The Odin Project, but I decided to take it a little bit further.

Note this isn't a responsive website – desktop only, please.

Other projects

edrone
Pierdology