To-do, or not to-do, that is the shitty question.

So you’re just beginning your development journey and the shitty tutorial you’re following has tasked you with building a shitty to-do app. You build the shitty to-do app and you start your journey towards becoming a shit developer like everyone else. News-flash: you’re wasting your time and effort and all you’re learning in the end is how to copy shit code from one place to another. This shitty page aims to ponder on the philosophically shitty question, “To-do, or not to-do?”. By the end, if you’re still willing to make a shitty to-do app to start your shitty development journey, be my shitty guest because you’re not wasting my shitty time and effortm, you’re wasting yours.

The shitty problem

Almost every shitty bootcamp, youtube video or tutorial you go through has a shitty placeholder app for you to build. It can be a to-do app, a calculator or some other shitty and useless app. The problem is not that the app is shit, because all code is ultimately shit. The problem is that the app is shit and “useless”. Once you follow the tutorial end-to-end, all you would have learnt in the shitty process is how to use your mouse pointer to select a bunch of shitty text, press Ctrl+C on your shitty keyboard, go to a text editor and then go and press Ctrl+V on your shitty keyboard. And this is if you’re even slightly interested. If not, you’ll just right-click on your shitty mouse and click on copy and then paste like a shitty cavemen (Cavemen had better etiquette than this honestly).

If you’re lucky, you’ll learn a few shitty things about CRUD operations along the way. But let’s be honest, you’re not gonna remember a shitty thing come morning. So what’s the point of making a shitty to-do app or a calculator or any other shitty app?

The shitty wheel has already been invented

The shitty wheel was already invented by the shitty people of Mesopotamia around 3500 BC. There’s no point re-inventing it unless you’re somehow shitty enough to make a shitty wheel that helps you travel across multiple shitty dimensions or helps you travel through time. The same shitty concept applies to apps. It’s not to say that you should not build shitty apps that have already been built. You just shouldn’t waste your shitty time and effort on simple and useless apps that provide no value to you or to the shitty society. Before taking the decision to build a shitty to-do app, use 100% of your shitty brain and try figuring out the following:

Are all your shitty needs and use cases already fulfilled?

Once you have the answer to the above-mentioned shitty questions, try asking yourself the following:

What in the name of holy Linus Torvalds do I do?

Look at whatever shitty problem Linus was facing. Currently, his shitty solution to a shitty problem is being used by millions of shitty computers all over the world for almost every shitty task you can imagine. You just have to look at shitty problems that you or shitty people around you are facing, and figure out a shitty solution for them. God knows you’re not shitty enough to be able to build the entire shitty solution by yourself in one go. You’ll start by writing shitty code and face shitty incomprehensible errors. This is where you do your shitty research and ask for help in shitty communities and figure out how to solve these shitty errors. THIS IS HOW YOU FUCKING LEARN.

Once you face an error and spend 4 shitty hours trying to solve it only to figure out you were simply missing a shitty semicolon, then and only then will you realize how much of a colon destroying shitty activity writing shitty code is and how much shitty joy it brings you.

Who is a shitty developer?

A shitty developer is not someone who can write beautiful and syntactically correct code. Any shitty imp can do that. With the advent of AI, those shitty imps have already been replaced by shitty LLMs. A shitty developer is someone who knows what to build and how to build it. Someone who can figure out the shitty logic that is required. Someone who can face the shittiest and most incomprehensible errors and find solutions on the weirdest and most hidden corners of the internet. More rerlevant to today’s world, a shitty developer is someone who can write the most shitty prompt known to humankind, give it to an LLM and get the most beautifully crafted shitty code as a result, and still be able to solve any shitty issues that occur. Someone who thinks of AI as a shitty intern and not as the shitty senior developer going at it solo.

In today’s shitty world, you don’t have to learn 100 shitty programming languages to be a shitty developer. You have just have to master the basics of at least one shitty language, and then use 100% of your shitty brain to express your solution in the most descriptive and shitty way so that even a shitty child can understand it. Once you master the shitty art of describing what you want to do, and then scouring the weirdest depths of the internet to find that one answer by a random beautifully shitty human being several years ago, when they faced the exact same shitty error as you, you have become a shitty developer.

Describing what you want to do doesn’t mean “I want to make a shitty app that does this shitty thing.”. It means “I want to make a shitty app that does this shitty thing. To begin with, I need to implement <some shitty logic> in this shitty way to achieve <some shitty thing>”. It is a combination of these shitty expressive statements that create a beautifully shitty description of your shitty solution/app.

All shitty jokes aside, one important thing I would like to emphasize on is that please don’t use AI to write code. Use AI to help YOU write code. The shitty code written by a LLM is only as good as the shitty prompt given to it. And most importantly, while you’re still learning, try writing shitty code yourself and not use LLMs at all, If you do want to, use LLMs only to help you debug that shitty code, and actually try understanding the shitty solution it gives you. Once you’re comfortable with writing shitty code and scouring the internet like a maniac, you can then start telling your LLM to help you write the shitty code.

Conclusion

You can build a shitty to-do app if you want. I can’t force you to not waste your time and effort. All I can say is that the answer to the shitty question is “Not to-do”. You can build something that is truly useful and amazingly shitty. Copy-pasting shitty code isn’t going to get you anywhere. All you’ll get in the end is a few wasted hours and a literally shitty app filled with even more shitty boilerplate code that makes no sense and has no use.

It is my humble shitty request to anyone who is starting their shitty development journey, please build something useful. It doesn’t have to be complex. It just has to solve a real problem or fulfill a real use-case.

Happy shitting!