đ Makers + đGlitch = đ»Amour
REDL driven development.
While enjoying some glorious Corsican summer days with my partner in crime, we built a chatbot for Slack. It recently got approved on the Slack App Directory.
The experience of creating and deploying this đ€conversational interface was delightful and, itâs worth mentioning, completely free (as in free đșbeer).
The tool we used is called Glitch and I thought the least I can do to thank Glitch was to write something about its đŻawesomeness.
đ€ I was skeptical
As in all good love stories, it started off on the wrong foot. The first time I heard about Glitch I thought this was yet another online code editor. I had seen and tried other ones before and always ended up being disappointed.
Like most of the developers out there I had already invested a lot of time setting up my dev environment. I had my editor (Atom) with all the customizations I wanted, I had my terminal (iTerm2) so I felt in control, I swore by Git using it from the command line, and I had my shortcuts, I had my aliases, I had my language (Clojure)⊠The list could go on and on.
Online editor? Iâm not going to waste time playing with that toy!
I closed Glitchâs tab and went back to my local setup.
đš The art of making
I relish doing side projects: they are opportunities to try new stuff without having the stress of doing something perfect.
Before Glitch, I would open a blank editor and hack away. Building something from scratch can be delightful because you take the time to understand every bit of the software youâre writing â and that usually makes you feel good!
However, itâs pretty easy to get lost on the way if youâre following that approach. For instance, I had one disastrous experience when trying to build my first Messenger bot. Frustration was real.
Sometimes you just really want to build something faster and reach that âRough MVPâ stage as soon as possible. Letâs admit that at the end of the day itâs easier to clean or iterate on something thatâs already working.
đ Plop the bot
Amir Shevatâs book Designing Bots had just been released and this was perfect timing to read it during the holidays. Following the methodology inside we started writing down ideas for potential Slack bots that we would build as a side project.
We ended up choosing to build Plop. Plop is a casual corporate game to get to know your coworkers better. It takes place entirely within Slack and basically boils down to being able to recognize as many profile pictures (of your coworkers) as possible in 30 seconds.
Itâs worth mentioning that Plop is also a friendly fish who hopefully gets along well with Glitchâs đdouble fish!
đ Building Plop
We then had to decide how to really build it. The book mentioned different options that all come with a compromise between flexibility and ease of development. We settled on Botkit, because it would bring enough flexibility while being a battle-tested framework. Going through Botkitâs readme I noticed this Remix on Glitch button.
It felt like this was the right moment to give it a try!
I clicked on the button and there I was, right in the middle of the code. I was a bit lost for a moment because I didnât see right away the Glitch-specific readme. However, after having read it and followed the steps to configure my Slack app to âhitâ my Glitch app, I had a bot up and running in production at a url they provided [your-app-name].glitch.com
â Say again?
â After a few minutes I had a live bot with its code in an editor before my eyes.
â Putain, câest ouf !
đ€ Software engineering
When youâre first editing code in Glitch, youâre shocked. You think that itâs fast, really way too fast!
Keystrokes
After recovering from the initial dizziness, you then come to understand and appreciate the power of what we could call a REDL (Read Eval Deploy Loop) : on every keystroke your code is saved and the container of the live app is restarted â no jokes!
Collaboration
Also, itâs collaborative. You get the ah-I-see-your-cursor-too kind of collaboration, and itâs great. Glitch could actually be the ultimate tool for remote pair programming!
Logging
As for debugging, you have access to the logs of your app. You have also access to the console if you want to do more advanced stuff. In my case, I didnât really feel the need to hack around in the console â logs were enough.
Assets
âI love managing my assets and include them in my code. I never mess with their paths, and Iâm having fun!â â said no one ever
Maybe that was âla đcerise sur le đ°gateauâ but the way Glitch handles assets is brillant: your drag and drop them in a âfolderâ, youâre then provided with an absolute url pointing to a CDN, and you can paste it where you need it. Done.
Env & data
Every Glitch project has a special .env file and .data folder which are not visible for outside people. They also donât get copied when a project is remixed. Sweet af.
All in all, there has always been a struggle to take a local side project to âproductionâ. Glitch removes that friction in a brutal way. đBrutal!
đ Potential improvements
I obviously enjoyed the experience, but I canât help to think about what could be on their roadmap:
- Search: itâs frustrating not being able to search within filesâŠ
- Languages: I understand that itâs important to focus on one language (JavaScript) for now in order to keep a quality product, but thatâd be so amazing to be able to write Clojure code in this kind of setup. It might be easier to integrate than other languages since Clojure compiles to JavaScript!
- Formatting: Glitch is already an opinionated platform. Why not adding tools like Prettier by default?!
- Sleeping: A glitch app sleeps after 5 minutes. Itâs possible to overcome that limitation with an uptime service, but Iâd rather have the possibility to tick a box or not within Glitch (and pay for that if needed).
- Git: I read that this is coming, but yeah Git branching would be nice. The current workflow for a live app is to remix your project and to import it back to the original one. A bit cumbersome.
- Git again: The Git history that Glitch makes has not a lot of meaning. This could be nice at least to attribute commits to people. For blame and glory!
A maker life is a good life.
To conclude, I highly recommend that you check Glitch out and make something today! It doesnât matter whether itâs a small bot like Plop or a future billion-dollar company. Itâs only important to remember that a maker life is a good life.
