DEV Community: Mince

I MADE A MOVIE APP THATS NOT IMDb CLONED

Mince — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 13:08:35 +0000

After a few years of tutorial hell and "Maybe I can't do that" moments I finally started building a web app that I was determined to finish - 'Cut'

The idea

The idea is pretty simple. You get recommended movies with the title, the poster, the synopsis, the trailer, the genres and the rating. Like this:

You click arrow right if you like it and arrow left if you don't like it. You click arrow down if you're uninterested and just want to move on. You can hit 'w' if you want to save it to the watchlist (I will add a button soon). This is just a simple movie discovery app that I wanted to make, and I felt would tons of time mindlessly searching for movies as you have a personalized movie discovery app tailored for you. Well, you might have some questions, and I do have answers for them

_But the Ott platforms already do that right? _
Yeah, they do but they tend to only show you more recent movies and there's also a feature in my app to recommend movies based on your mood right now. And also, your Ott might get used by your friends, your family etc. and that doesn't allow for personalized selection and also the Otts only recommend movies from their catalog. So, I find my app pretty unique

But let's address the elephant in the room, I am just an amateur developer who can't even call an Api properly, so I had some learning to do. But I was determined to finish this project. So, this is devlog - 1 of building "CUT".

Note: I am going to build a rough working version without any accounts, databases and try to keep it simple because all of this is a learning process, but I still had to face some problems like building an algorithm

STAGE 1: PLANNING

Of course, I had to use an API to fetch such a huge number of movies, and I went with TMDb because it provides a generous 40 requests per minute which are more than enough for this prototype of an app.

These are the features I wanted to ship in the first prototype:

An infinite scrolling feed with an effective algorithm
A watchlist with all the providers listed
A mood system to pick a mood and get similar movies only for a certain time

These are the features I am hoping to complete though I also have other ideas I want to implement later.

STAGE 2: THE ALGORITHM

See, the algorithm is based on a simple idea, and I honestly thought wouldn't work very well. But to my surprise it genuinely giving picks I liked. See we have a ton of genres with values at the first

Action: 100
Adventure: 100
Romance: 100
Animation: 100

So, if you dislike or like a movie the values are increased and decreased. And we run rng and pick a random genre based on the weights so if you like a bunch of action movies, the weight of action genre increases, and you get more action movie but getting other genres is possible so you can discover all sorts of movies. Also, all the movies recommended are made sure to be popular, and have a minimum 7 rating. Also, we also often recommend local Korean, Japanese, Hindi etc... language movies. This simple algorithm worked really well (at least for me)

The reason this worked well is because there are a lot of genres in TMDb. There are 23 genres and such a huge catalog allows for a tailored algorithm.

STAGE 3: DATA

So, we have to store quite a bit of data for the app to work. The first and obvious thing is storing the algorithm values of a user. Also, all the shown movies because we shouldnt show the same movie again and again. We would also have to store the watchlist and such. I decided to use local storage. Okay... Okay... Let me explain myself

For those who dont know Local storage lets you store data directly in the browser so you don't lose your data until the user voluntarily clears it. Using local storage, we don't even need the users to sign up. But it's not on a server so we can't cross share the data between users or devices

For a prototype, there's no need to have accounts or have multi-device support because let's be real, I don't think we are getting even 10 users, but hey you could use it once it releases. I also don't have the budget to make or rent servers or the time to learn SQL. I also didn't want to make it on firebase because that would increase the friction of making the app and I wanted to do all that if the app gets real users later on. And simply though, local storage gets the job done.

CONCLUSION

So, I talked about how I completed making the algorithm, the resources I am using and how I am storing data. In the next devlog i am going talk about how i made the watchlist. I am also going to talk about the UI.

Feel free to leave any suggestions, comments and critiques. Stay tuned and follow for the next devlog thats coming soon... (If this even does well)

New post ig

Mince — Sun, 23 Feb 2025 08:46:13 +0000

TOP 3 PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS YOU MUST USE 🤯

Mince ・ Feb 15 '25

#programming #productivity #opensource #webdev

This is so good

Mince — Sat, 15 Feb 2025 15:02:26 +0000

TOP 3 PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS YOU MUST USE 🤯

Mince ・ Feb 15 '25

#programming #productivity #opensource #webdev

TOP 3 PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS YOU MUST USE 🤯

Mince — Sat, 15 Feb 2025 13:25:08 +0000

Lets say youre working on a huge project and you need to be as productive as possible in order to make the absolute most out of your time. Here are three productivity tools that are absolute masterpieces when it comes to productivity while coding

GitHub Co-pilot

GitHub co-pilot is one of the most productive when it comes to AI-code companions. Sure! I have tried a bunch of different code AIs in the past, that was when GitHub co-pilot wasn't free. Now, GitHub copilot free version is enough for most programmers. Why? It's the same as others. First things, it can recommend directly from other GitHub repos making it more powerful and intelligent. Next, the inline chat and a bunch of features that GitHub has built that are not there in other AI assistants are absolutely masterpieces. I think you should definitely try it. Its free and awesome.

Usefulness: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Notion

Notion has a nice UI and can make project planning and idea laying out easier, clean and most importantly productive. We can call in a team onto notion and they can all together plan and layout the different ideas. Also, they can pick through the best ideas, layout the to-dos and over ally Notion makes it extremely awesome to plan and execute anything

Usefulness: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Trello

Trello is another tool that makes the project build process more interactive, progressive and productive. It's basically a kanban board. What's a kanban board? A kanban board is simply a bunch of lists through which you can drag to-dos or more specifically tasks. This makes it easier to track what features you will have to work, which features you have started working on and which features are already done. Many people have used it, I used it, and it works. Try a kanban board today!! My pick would be Trello because that's the first one I found. You can also try Miro

Usefulness: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Outro

Thanks for making it till here, have a good bug less debugging day. One thing: I am definitely not AI. If you think I am AI, your AI 😂😂

Guys part 3 is out!!!! 🥳🥳

Mince — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:51:29 +0000

WHAT TECHNOLOGIES DO BIG COMPANIES USE 🤔 PART 3

Mince ・ Feb 12 '25

#webdev #programming #javascript #beginners

WHAT TECHNOLOGIES DO BIG COMPANIES USE 🤔 PART 3

Mince — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:50:57 +0000

We're back into this series guys. This is the most beloved series in my profile ever. So here's part 3!!!

Dev.to

So it seems like dev community was built on top of Forem which is used to empower communities... What's forem made of?

Forem

So, forem was mode of 58% ruby and 29% javascript. It's open sourced so you can check it for yourself

TikTok

So tik tok uses a variety of programming languages with the most prominent being C, Java and Swift. Comment if you think tik tok will get banned

Windows

The operating system that the whole world uses was built using C!? Yeah, it was basically the most perfect programming language at the time so XD

Mac OS

What about MacOs, mac os also uses C so nothing new...

Android

Android was not built with C , it was built using JAVA. I thought it was C three times in a row but no!

IOS

Similarly IOS also should be made with JAVA right? Wrong It is C again

This time, we say 8 different softwares. Comment what I should do next. This was fun and the longest in the series yet, On this note bye!!

Guys follow meh on X: Mince_2328

Do you accept that we shouldn't care of followers in dev.to, They are all bots

Mince — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 09:19:28 +0000

Do you want some tips for designing

Mince — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 15:09:24 +0000

Part 3 coming tomorrow

Mince — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 14:58:08 +0000

WHAT TECHNOLOGIES DO BIG COMPANIES USE 🤔 PART 2

Mince ・ Apr 27 '24

#javascript #webdev #beginners #programming

Did you the difference between

Mince — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 09:05:15 +0000

LIBRARY VS FRAMEWORK

Mince ・ Feb 11 '25

#programming #beginners #tutorial #python

This was fun...

Mince — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 09:04:33 +0000

LIBRARY VS FRAMEWORK

Mince ・ Feb 11 '25

#programming #beginners #tutorial #python

A quick rundown....

Mince — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 04:40:05 +0000

LIBRARY VS FRAMEWORK

Mince ・ Feb 11 '25

#programming #beginners #tutorial #python