With the help of Open Source Cloud (OSC), I was able to create a fully functioning web application that retrieves book data from the Open Library API in a very short amount of time. The goal of the application was to give users a social and personalized way to track their reading.
The app allows users to create an account, maintain multiple book lists, follow other users, write reviews, and track their reading progress. Users can also create custom book lists tailored to their interests.
Initially, setting everything up was somewhat challenging, and the configuration process itself was time-consuming. However, once the system was properly set up and running, the actual development of the website became both convenient and fast. Creating a website of this complexity alone, without using OSC or Codex, would likely have taken several months.
Previously, I worked on a similar website as part of a university course in a group project with four students. Even with multiple contributors, developing a comparable application took around one month. Using Codex as a tool and assistant significantly sped up the process, allowing me to complete the project in just two days.
Making small adjustments was also very efficient. Instead of manually searching through hundreds of lines of code, I could simply ask the AI assistant to make changes. Since Codex was able to log in to OSC, it could do nearly everything for me and I was able to avoid much of the repetitive and time-consuming work.
The website is divided into several pages:** Start, Lists, Following, and Profile.**
• The Start page allows users to browse trending books or search for books and other users.
• The Lists page displays the user’s book lists along with the books added to each list.
• The Following page shows the users that the current user follows.
• The Profile page displays the user’s profile and allows editing details such as name, username, profile picture, and biography.
All application data, including users and book lists, is stored using CouchDB provided by OSC.
Overall, Open Source Cloud combined with Codex made it possible to build, deploy, and iterate on a relatively complex web application in a very short amount of time, greatly reducing development effort while maintaining flexibility and control.
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