Codel

Access

Access Codel at: codel.me. Note that it MUST be run via a MOBILE as it is not currently supported/optimised for desktop (due to time constraints on the project).

Inspiration

The project was inspired by the fun, accessible, daily-challenge nature of Wordle, mixed with the desire to design a web-app that helps people learn how to code through a game! Hopefully it's a fun way to learn programming by competing against friends in bitesize daily coding challenges.

What it does

Codel is a mobile-oriented website (codel.me) that presents a daily coding challenge by providing some desired output and requesting the user/player to generate the pseudocode that recreates this output. In each daily challenge, the player may select from a limited selection (and quantity) of available programming keywords (e.g. "IF", "FOR", "PRINT", etc.) in order to construct their solution. If they succeed, they may add their name (along with their time) to the daily leaderboard - so they can see how quickly/slowly they solved the task compared to their friends and others. And if they fail, then hopefully they can learn where they went wrong and try again in the next challenge the next day (becoming a little better at coding each day).

How I made it

I created this web-app using Wix and its Javascript-based integrated coding interface, Velo. This was a solo project and it was a fun excuse for me to learn how to use Velo (as well as gaining more experience in web design generally). I also designed some daily challenges (though have only so far implemented one for demonstration).

(I also bought and linked the domain name codel.me - as in "Worlde but for coding")

Challenges I ran into

This project turned out to be a harder undertaking than I first anticipated, as I had to learn Velo from scratch and implementing this fully-functioning object-oriented game (along with features such as the live leaderboard - which required learning and utilising Velo's new "database collections" feature) proved to be a busy job indeed.

Of course, there were also a number of compromises made, as with any hackathon, such as having to forego the drag-and-drop approach of building pseudocode via keywords (as this proved to be something not easily implementable with Velo - at least as a beginner) for a button-based approach.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I'm very pleased with the leaderboard feature I implemented, which allows players to upload their name and time to the daily list of successful players. This adds a lot to the game by making it more interactive and feel less like a solo game. I'm also pleased with how dynamic I have made the challenge-building - in that I have made it is very easy for me to add new daily challenges with ease requiring only minimal modificiation to some parameters.

What I learned

I learned from scratch how to use Velo, of which I had no experience before! I also previously had very little experience in Javascript or web-design and so I gained excessive practise in these in the past 24 hours.

What's next for Codel

Of course, first and foremost, I could add more challenges (a new one daily), in addition to the one daily challenge I currently have implemented to showcase the game. Additional features, such as profiles (with profile pictures and stats, and possibly head-to-head challenges between friends, in addition to the daily challenges) could be fun too!