## Glitch ##

About me

I consider myself a Javascript enthusiast who enjoys finding the limits the language can reach in all the environments it can run in. Front-end, server, distributed systems or tiny devices. The possibilities with JS seem endless and the global community around it make the language's future very exciting.

Glitch. Your new dev powertool

Setting up a node server to suit your needs is often laborious. There's application configuration, server setup, folder structure, HTTPS support, ... the list goes on and can be as long as you want to really. This process can be particularly tedious when you just want to create a playground to test out some ideas.

A few days back a friend of mine pointed out that I had a much better choice! Painless and quick setup with all the goodies one can ask for (deployment included) FOR FREE!!! Granted I didn't take his word for granted and decided to look into this 'Glitch' thing he was talking about. As it turns out, it's awesome!

How I approached learning ## Glitch

First step. Visit their home page

Like with any other platform, one first has to see how they present themselves publicly. When you visit https://glitch.com/ the first thing you read is: 'Glitch is the friendly community where you'll build the app of your dreams'. A straightforward message, not giving away much of what they actually do. It's retro looking style make it look like a place where you'd expect to find scratch projects or download old NeoGeo emulators and games. Nothing stands further from the truth.

A quick browse through the homepage exhibits some projects you can 'remix' (start from them and enhance) and the well known and attractive 'register' button. Create an account and jump in is as much as I can recommend.

There are multiple sections with project bases you can start from. Things like:

• rest-api
• auth0
• nodemailer
• firebase-quickstart
• html-5-boilerplate
• ... (the list goes on)

All these projects offer great starting points for plenty of common web development scenarios that you would like to have boilerplates for. You can jump in a view the source code and a running result of it. Even better, you can 'remix' it and get your ideas running from a well documented and robust starting point.

You also have the option to create a 'new project' starting from a few templates:

• node app
• node-sqlite
• webpage
• import an existing repo

All these options are also very well documented and give you great starting points to play around with a prepared node environment, ready for the task you have in mind.

Challenges I faced

Getting used to it

One of the things that took me a little to buy into was the interface. It's not immediately clear what you can do. For example, until you actually click on 'Logs' and play around a little with the bottom drawer that opens you don't fully understand that you are actually on a running instance with access to the console, node, npm, ... commands at the tip of your fingers, a great debugger, etc ...

Another thing that took me a little to get the best out of what the .env file. I didn't directly jump into it but once I did and read the comments on it my mind was blown. Environment variable configuration at it's simplest. A great and simple way to allow quick configurations in a private manner! Kudos for this!

The key here was that I was face to face with an online editor that was much more than just that. It is an online, continuous deployment environment with great dev features and a huge library of boilerplates to start from. Also, a great place to showcase prototype, share code sandboxes and learn new stuff.

Key takeaways

If I haven't convinced you yet of the power behind this simple looking tool, let them give you a quick talk through what the offer (https://glitch.com/about/). Wiz around the page, look at a couple projects or even create one. Live the glitch experience and come back to tell everyone what it was like!