Project idea
The base idea behind the project was inspired by the phenomenal 30 Seconds of Code and conceived as a way to help junior developers I am mentoring, get useful coding tips and knowledge, while going about their day-to-day tasks at work.
Knowing they would probably have to open hundreds of tabs every day, it seemed as the best place to put interesting content, in order to feed them information in a nonintrusive and nonobligatory way. Basically, I wanted to be sneaky and make them learn without them noticing it…
The Challenge
What I wanted to achieve, was to completely erase the pain point of having to go to a specific website, read through tips, tricks, explanations and code snippets, then after some time go back to that same website not knowing where you left off. Even though this doesn’t necessarily sound like a problem, it becomes the main reason people stop visiting these kinds of websites.
Unfortunately, our attention spans are becoming shorter and shorter just like our free time, and no one wants to go through the same process every time they have a few minutes to spare and learn something new.
Pain points
The biggest pain point I’ve encountered was finding the content to feed the extension with. I was torn between writing the content (code snippets) myself, and finding a good and reliable API that could be the source.
Using an external API would’ve meant, that the extension would only work while the user was online, and that seemed like a wasted opportunity. Imagine traveling by plane, a bus or a train without a stable connection or no connection at all. Now, what could be better then using that free time to expand your knowledge?
After some research I found out that 30 Seconds of Code and similar projects on Github offer their snippets under CC0 Licence which enabled me to use them in my project. Thanks to these snippets being simple markdown files I was also able to create an extension that is fully functional even while offline.
The target group
The intended end user for the extension is a beginner/junior developer or simply someone, just getting into development. Seasoned developers can still get some value from the extension in a form of refreshing their knowledge or potentially getting interested into new things.
Development phase
The alpha version of the extension was built with Google Chrome in mind. End goal was to have a web extension that would work across many different browsers, but due to time limitations of a “weekend project” I had to settle for Chrome only version at first. This was due to WebExtension API documentation being all over the place and the best written resources were for Google Chrome.
The setup is simple, a small webpack configuration that at the time of writing this supports both chromium and gecko based browsers. Extension is written in React without any UI Kits or “fancy” CSS preprocessors because I wanted to ship the alpha in one weekend, and leave the codebase simple enough that even an inexperienced developer could easily understand whats happening. I did this because I wanted potential users to also be able to get involved with further development of the extension.
Evaluation
In the end, the extension gained a fair amount of recognition and support and overall I am very proud of the codebase behind it. The system is simple enough, that even the intended end user group of beginner developers can read through it and understand it, while still being elaborate enough that any additional changes and features are easily added. At the time of writing extension is in v1.1.0 and a lot of new features were added by the community.
Data
Now for those of you that like statistics here are the “All Time” charts from the Google Store. All data below starts at 3rd February but the relevant data starts on the 6th February as that was the day the extension was released to public. The initial spike in installations and usage happened on 6th February (Release date) after a successful Product Hunt Campaign, where 30 Seconds of Knowledge was featured as #2 Product of the Day.
Takeaways
The most valuable takeaway from this project for me was the knowledge I gained about product marketing. Even though I’ve released a lot of similar “weekend projects” 30 Seconds of Knowledge has gained the biggest recognition and support.
This was initially a product of luck and a successful Product Hunt campaign, but at later stages I’ve taken the time to prepare materials promote the extension and spread the word. It was not easy and there is still a lot for me to learn in this field, but I am grateful on everything I did get to learn and very proud I’ve built something a lot of people find helpful. In the end, the biggest reward I got from this project, is the feeling I’m helping people learn new stuff every day.
Do you want more? Check https://owwly.com
