Hey Dev Community!
The pace of AI in development is staggering. There's a new state-of-the-art model every few weeks, but I wanted to go beyond the benchmarks and see what it's actually like to build with one. I spent a day with the new Qwen3-Coder and used it to generate five fully functional applications from scratch.
This post is a summary of that journey, with the full video walkthrough embedded below. My goal was to test its "agentic coding" capabilities and show a practical, easy way for anyone to start experimenting.
What is Qwen3-Coder?
In short, it's a new open-source coding model from Alibaba's Qwen team. Its key feature is being "agentic," meaning it's designed to do more than just complete code—it can understand a high-level goal, plan the steps, and generate the complete application logic.
The "Easy Button": Alibaba Cloud Model Studio
Instead of a complex local installation, I used the official Alibaba Cloud Model Studio. It's a web-based playground that gives you:
✅ Free Access: You can use the full suite of Qwen3-Coder models.
💰 A Massive Free Token Grant: New users get over 50 million tokens, which is more than enough to build some seriously cool projects.
The video includes a full, step-by-step tutorial on how to get signed up and claim the tokens, which takes you from having no account to being ready to code in about 10 minutes.
The 5 Projects I Built with a Single Prompt Each 🚀
Here’s what I prompted Qwen3-Coder to build. The video shows the entire process of generating the code and testing each one in CodePen.
3D Car Racing Game: A simple but functional racing game with keyboard controls and a UI.
3D Plane Fighter Game: An air combat game where you can fly a plane and shoot at enemy targets.
AI Image Generator Website: A complete front-end for a DALL-E style image generator, with a prompt area, settings, and an inspiration gallery.
3D Zombie Dragon FPS: A first-person shooter where you have to survive against waves of enemies.
Web-Based Music Sequencer: A multi-track sequencer with playable piano keys and different instrument tracks.
My Main Takeaway
The model's ability to generate the full stack (HTML, CSS, and JS) for these interactive apps was mind-blowing. The music sequencer and the website front-end worked nearly perfectly on the first try.
The 3D games required more specific prompting to get the controls right (e.g., specifying WASD movement, mouse look), which was a great lesson in prompt engineering for agentic tasks. It's not just about what you ask, but how you ask it.
I'm genuinely excited about what this means for rapid prototyping and solo developers. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
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