Grow-BitByBit

This is a submission for the GitHub Copilot Challenge : New Beginnings

What I Built

Becoming a great developer happens bit by bit—through constant learning and growth. For me, that means keeping up with quality readings. There are times when I'm so drained after a long day that I usually skip my daily reading because even finding a good article becomes a task. I mean I can randomly stumble upon something but what if I don't? I skip my daily reading.

For 2025, my New Year’s resolution is to read consistently about topics that interest me. That’s why I created BitByBit—a simple, efficient app designed for developers like me who want to learn without the hassle.

What It Does?

• Provides the simplest SignIn-Thanks to firebase Google Sign In
  -On the first Sign in, User selects the topics or interests they want to explore.


• Next time, you’re greeted with a tailored list of articles, sourced specifically for you.


• The app, powered by Google Programmable Search Engine ensures you receive high-quality, relevant content, so you can focus on learning instead of searching

Demo

1. Sign In to the App via Google

1. 
   Select your interests
   These are AI-generated topics/interests for you to select from. Once user selects them and clicks on "Save", they get stored in the database so that whenever user logs in again, he gets a list of articles on one of the interests selected previously.

3.Get your Articles

One of the selected topics is used to fetch articles in that genre using Google Programmable Search Engine.

Try the app here

Repo

Click here to access the repository

Copilot Experience

GitHub copilot is a gamechanger. One of the features is its ability to automatically extract all the text from a selected file, eliminating the need for copy-pasting and saving a tremendous amount of time.

For the development of this app, most of the coding tasks—like creating components, setting up AuthGuard, integrating Firebase, building the Authentication Context provider, and even crafting APIs—were accomplished with GitHub Copilot Chat in VSCode. Another good part was how it would break down the task into simple steps to follow.

All it took was a single prompt like I would type "generate an api that does...." and it would create a proper function.

Moreover,I used Typescript for this project-something that I'm still not a pro at-so a lot of errors thrown were also fixed using the inline chat. Again, this saved a lot of time since all I had to do was just select the text.

The model switcher feature is also pretty useful but I personally liked using Claude 3.5.

GitHub Models

There are several GitHub Models available in GitHub Marketplace with proper instructions and code snippets on how to integrate them. Moreover, there is also a Playground to compare different models. I tried GPT 4o and Mistral models for my use case there and found Gpt4o to give best results most of the time. Hence, I decided to use GPT 4o for my topic generation part.

Conclusion

With the support of GitHub Copilot, this project has the potential to become valuable for developers looking to build a consistent reading habit. It simplifies the process, ensuring you have quality articles tailored to your interests—all just a sign-in away!