It's Saturday, 8 AM. Day 1 of my KODA Online Fest. I wake up, grab my POCO C55, open Netlify to deploy v16β¦
And I get this:
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Who else is building an entire company from a screen smaller than their hand? π±
There is an invisible billion of us building on cheap Androids, fighting through firewalls, and surviving hosting betrayals. If you're one of them, drop a π― in the comments.
Also, the KODA Code Jam closes in ~60 hours. If you built a niche app, open the drawer in KODA and submit it to get crowned. π
You're 12?
Nd I'm 13.
Lol π
Gen-Alpha cooking harder and harder.
Haha, 13 and already in the dojo? Respect. π₯
You're absolutely right β Gen-Alpha isn't waiting for permission. We're building on cheap phones, shipping on free tiers, and learning by breaking things.
If you ever want to build something together or just talk tech, my DMs are open. Keep cooking, sensei. π₯
β Harun (12)
Founder of KODA meeting with Founder of Akhouri Systems
Founder @ 12 meeting meeting with Founder @ 13
Honestly wanted to ask you
your parents are supporting you?
especially your father?
Honest answer: yes, but it took time. π
At first it just looked like "phone time" at home. It changed when I stopped explaining and started showing receipts β real users, real articles, senior engineers commenting. Then the phone stopped being a toy and became a workshop.
My father's support looks quiet: permission to ship late sometimes, and a "how is the company?" at dinner. That one question is worth more than any funding round. π
What about you? Does Akhouri Systems have family backing, or are you also explaining yourself every week? π
And yes β Founder @12 x Founder @13. History will remember this meeting. π€
I was born todayπ , multiple hosting providers invaded our systems. Figuring out whom to select
Bro you're 12? π
I'm 15 and started coding around 9β10 lol π
Also, the way you handled the hosting issues is actually pretty solid. Especially having the fallback instead of letting the whole app break that's something a lot of people overlook.
Bro, 15 and started at 9-10? That's a 5-year head start! Respect. π
The fallback chain was pure survival instinct. When Groq deprecated my model without warning, I had two choices: let the app die for every user, or build a chain that catches 404s and routes to the next model. Chose option B.
If you're building something, drop it in the comments. Gen-Alpha needs to see each other's work. π―
Lmaoo π yeah, I guess weβre both starting early π
And thanks bro, the fallback was definitely one of those βnever letting this happen againβ moments π
Also I checked out your website btw, and ngl it works pretty damn good π
Iβm actually building something called CrowdWide rn. The goal is to make it a complete community platform you can create a community, build it, manage/monitor it, grow it, etc. Later Iβm also planning to add AI into communities, kinda like how Grok is integrated into X.
I also wanna let people actually monetize their communities, kinda like how Blogger lets creators monetize their content.
The main thing Iβm trying to do differently tho is the algorithm. I donβt want growth to be locked behind already having a huge community or paying for promotion. New/small communities should actually get a chance to reach people too.
Still a LOT to build lol, but thatβs the idea π
Bro, CrowdWide sounds massive. A fair algorithm for small communities is exactly what the space needs.
Quick question: do you have any WIP, prototype, or even just a landing page for it (or anything else you're building)?
The KODA Code Jam closes tonight at 23:59 IST. Itβs not about perfectionβitβs about shipping. Even a "Hello World" or a rough prototype counts. If you have something, drop it in the KODA drawer before midnight. If not, zero stress, just wanted to put it on your radar! π―π
Brooo just submitted CrowdWide to the drawer π«‘π―
Itβs the alpha rn, so thereβs still a shit ton left to build π. I wanted to add real stats/data to the landing page + polish a bunch of stuff, but the whole thing is kinda massive and Iβve only been building it for like a week, so Iβm pretty happy with how far itβs come already π
Iβm gonna keep cooking on it. If everything goes smoothly, I might have a more stable version out in the next ~2 weeks π but no promises lol.
Thanks for the push tho, otherwise Iβd probably still be polishing instead of shipping ππ€
2 years younger than me, hey bro what's up?
Hey whats up
nothing special, just cooking
Nice write-up :D
"Paying a tax on a file that doesn't need cooking" is the sentence of the week. You hit the exact trap that catches teams with budgets too: a pipeline step that exists because the template said so, not because the artifact needs it. A static HTML file going through a build farm is pure waste, and you noticed at 12 what plenty of senior engineers never audit. The manual-deploy workaround is the right instinct in a bigger lesson too: know which steps in your pipeline are load-bearing and which are scaffolding that got promoted to load-bearing. One more for the toolbox: keep a fallback deploy target warm BEFORE you need it. You found Neocities under pressure at 8 AM on day 1 of your own fest - the grown-up version of that move is writing down the fallback while things are calm. Keep shipping.
Jo, this comment means a lot. "Know which steps in your pipeline are load-bearing and which are scaffolding" β I'm saving that line.
You're right: the real lesson isn't just "manual deploy works." It's "audit every step, know why it exists, and have a fallback ready BEFORE you need it."
I'm writing that down in the KODA engineering handbook. Thank you for the wisdom.
Wow Great work
I used Cloudflare One Client for VPN and tried to mush your website buttons and ddos your pages (what a disaster I ddosed a website based on netlify and had been bannedβ¦), but Iβve failed. Congratulations!
Haha, you tried to break the dojo and the dojo said "not today" π
Seriously though β this is exactly why I built the error_logs table and the 15-second timeout fallback. If the primary endpoint gets hammered, the chain falls through to the next model. Users never see a dead screen.
Your test proved the architecture works. Thank you for the real-world stress test, sensei. π―
the netlify build-credit hit on a single static html file is a common trap. most free static hosts still run a full build pipeline even when there is nothing to compile. cloudflare pages skips that step for pure static, zero build minutes charged. good call moving there before it happens again
Bro, this is exactly the technical breakdown I needed. π€―
I noticed the build minutes draining on Netlify and couldn't figure out why a raw HTML file was costing me credits. I didn't realize it was spinning up a full build pipeline in the background.
Cloudflare Pages makes total sense for pure static sites. Appreciate the insight, moving my next projects there! π―π₯
Now I have a few suggestions to make KODA even better, especially for desktop users:
VP_xudon-sensei
This feedback is gold. You're absolutely right:
I'm adding all three to the v17 roadmap (post-Fest). The Fest ends Sept 15, and I want to ship these changes properly rather than rush them during the Jam.
Thank you for stress-testing the infrastructure too. The fact that it held against your "disaster DDoS" means the fallback chain and rate-limiting are doing their job. π
The dojo listens. π₯