Chingu-Voyage-1 Clone Projects Lineup
Projects for teams to Reverse-engineer so you don’t freak out when the project-teams are launched ;p
What is going on here!?
So you signed up for a Build-to-Learn team project and just got thrown into a random chat. You’re with 2 other team-mates who are at this point probably strangers.
You’ve never done anything like this before and you’re confused AF. What we going to build?!
Don’t worry, this article is going to help you through this!
Your mission, if you choose to accept it
Step 1: Reverse-engineer the functionality of a suggested project below.
Step 2: then add the “secret sauce”. The secret sauce is taking that functionality and making a slightly different project. The “secret sauce pivot” is what makes the project unique, and will look better in your portfolio.
A “secret sauce pivot” is coming up with a unique idea with the existing functionality you’ve built. Once you’ve cloned a project, the team has confidence and can work together to build a new idea.
Step 3: Break out the bottle of champagne and celebrate. You’re one step closer to legendary developer status!
Some teams spend too much time trying to pick which project to do and they fail. Don’t be that team!
Don’t worry, we’ve made it easy! Pick one of these projects to reverse-engineer and clone it as a team. The foundational skills you’ll learn working as a remote dev team are more important than what you will build right now.
Tier-1 Projects — Clone a cool Bot Landing Page!
Tier-1 teams are at the html to early javascript phase of their learning journey.
Some teams spend too much time trying to pick which project to do and they fail. Don’t be that team! Pick one quickly and get started.
#1 — Donut splash page
#3 — Datacard
Here are some clone examples of past Tier-1 B2L teams have built:
Lion bot splash page clone (Fun fact: the Lion-bot was itself a B2L project built by a Tier-3 several months ago)
Paypal-bot splash page clone (this one is a great example of how if your team-members are up for the challenge you can increase the difficulty: this page was created with React!)
And here are some “secret sauce pivots” for the Tier-1 projects:
Code-O-Clock — Now you can schedule meetings, code,
and get automated summaries, right in Slack.
qBot — qBot’s specialty is finding answers to all of your coding questions.
Croak-bot — I quit smoking cigarettes 8 years ago. I’m a bot here if you ever need any advice or help in quitting that filthy habit.
Tier-2 Project — Clone a Chrome extension!
Tier-2 members are around the intermediate projects area.
Clone a “next-tab chrome-extension”. What the ?*!% is a next-tab chrome-extension you ask? See the links below.
Teams usually opt to clone MomentumDash (because it’s the hardest), but there are many similar apps with less functionality you can clone. Here is a list of easier Tier-2 Projects to clone.
What have past Tier-2 teams built?
Here’s one Momentum clone a former Tier-2 team did. Here’s another. And another.
It’s a great Tier-2 project because the functionality can include a quote generator, weather api, etc., which are intermediate projects.
And here’s two “secret sauce pivots” teams did after cloning the momentum functionality:
Dev-dash — a clean and gorgeous github repo viewer.
Web-Tao — a personal organiser with a WebDev touch. Hone your skills by accessing CodeWars algorithms from the extension
Tier-3 Projects — Reverse-engineer Jobbatical or build a bot!
Tier-3 members are between the Advanced projects and backend. For Tier-3, there is more room for flexibility with choosing projects, as people here often have already finished a B2L project before and they can confidently lead a team to success.
For Tier-3 there are two types of projects to choose from:
Option 1: Reverse-engineer Jobbatical — the basic functionality. This is a new B2L project and I’m super excited to see some teams clone this and then add a “secret sauce pivot”!
Option 2: Build a bot.
In the past few months, Chingu has been a bot-building factory. Just have a look at the Chingu-Projects Master List and you’ll find many examples of bots to get ideas flowing. There are also about 10 bot projects currently ongoing which aren’t on that list yet.
Bonus points if you come up with project idea that can improve our community and help with the Chingu mission to create a builder’s paradise for developers!
FAQ
Why suggest teams to reverse-engineer existing apps?
You might be wondering: why don’t they encourage we pick our own project to work on?
It’s a good question, and the reason is because it doesn’t work. We’ve tried this approach with around 100 teams. It doesn’t work well because it creates something called the Paradox of Choice. Most open project teams never even get to the code stage. They fail because teams can’t choose a project to work on.
Don’t be that team.
Does the team have to follow this?
No, but if this is your first time doing a team project, don’t try to build the next Facebook. 99% of people who join Chingu have never worked in a dev-team and 100% underestimate how important/challenging learning how to collaborate with other people is.
Once you learn these collaborative code skills though, you’ll be an entirely different developer. More confident, more capable, more employable.
