I’m 17 and building a new kind of learning + problem-solving platform called Knowzup — would developers actually use this?

sachin siddhartha — Sun, 24 May 2026 17:03:47 +0000

My name is Sachin Siddhartha (SE Sachin Siddhartha), I’m 17 years old, currently in 12th grade, and I’ve been building a platform called Knowzup mostly using an old 2011 HP laptop.

I started building it because I felt current learning and problem-solving platforms are still inefficient in many ways.

A lot of platforms:

feel cluttered,
bury unanswered questions,
make knowledge discovery difficult,
don’t support multimedia discussions properly,
or are frustrating for beginners trying to learn complex topics.

So instead of trying to build another social platform, I focused on creating a cleaner and more structured system centered around:

learning,
trusted problem solving,
multimedia discussions,
and community-driven knowledge discovery.

The core idea behind Knowzup is:

Users can:

Ask questions
Share problems
Post solutions
Create general knowledge content
Reply using text, images, or videos
Search across all content types
Discover unanswered questions easily
Build trust through reputation, voting, and verification systems

One feature I personally think is interesting:

If users search for something that doesn’t exist yet, Knowzup can mark it as an unanswered topic/request so other users can discover that missing problem and create solutions around it using:

text,
images,
videos,
explanations,
tutorials, or discussions.

So failed searches don’t just disappear — they become visible knowledge gaps for the community to solve.

I’ve also integrated AI features for:

content summaries,
smart search suggestions,
support/resource links,
and improving content discovery.

Current implemented features include:

multimedia posts & multimedia replies,
voting & reputation systems,
verification/trust systems,
vector-based search,
AI-assisted discovery,
push notifications,
analytics & crash reporting,
JWT auth + refresh tokens,
admin controls,
Redis integration,
OTA updates, and more.

Tech stack:
React Native, React, Node.js, Express.js, MongoDB, MySQL, Redis, TypeScript, Firebase, Python, C++, etc.

But before investing even more time into this, I want brutally honest feedback.

Not motivation.
Not fake encouragement.
Actual opinions.

Main questions:

Would developers or learners genuinely use something like this?
Which feature sounds most valuable?
Which feature sounds unnecessary or overengineered?
What would make a platform like this trustworthy long-term?
What problems do current learning/problem-solving platforms still fail at?
What would make you completely ignore or uninstall an app like this?

I’m fully open to criticism and technical feedback.

DEV Community: sachin siddhartha

I’m 17 and building a new kind of learning + problem-solving platform called Knowzup — would developers actually use this?