13 Comments
User's avatar
Yuezhong's avatar

Haha I love the Not-to-Do List!

Expand full comment
Xinran Ma's avatar

Haha yes, with a stoic approach!

Expand full comment
Olivier Jacob's avatar

Nice, so many different options to create something. It is almost a choice dilemma which one to use, V0, Lovable, GPTs, Cursor, React, Vue.js and many more.

Expand full comment
Xinran Ma's avatar

Indeed. There are many and more to come, although they all use similar models under the hood.

Expand full comment
Martin Kopta's avatar

This year I decided not to ask my students to test a prototype in Figma at the end of the semester, but a prototype in code. Most of them have never written source code. I left it up to them what simple tool they would design. A to-do list is about a fifth of the time. :)

Designers who ship!

Expand full comment
Xinran Ma's avatar

Nice! Is there a link of your course somewhere? I'm curious to see the student work.

Expand full comment
Pawel Jozefiak's avatar

The to-do list challenge perfectly captures why building small experimental apps is so valuable - they're deceptively simple on the surface but teach fundamentals that scale to complex projects. I love how each example showcases different angles (the "not-to-do" list is brilliant) while remaining approachable enough for anyone to build.

This reminds me of my own journey building minimalist tools - there's something incredibly clarifying about stripping functionality down to its essence. When I build quick prototypes for e-commerce clients, I often start with simple interfaces that force us to prioritize what truly matters before adding complexity.

The 30-minute builds here demonstrate that imperfect execution beats perfect planning every time. I unpacked this approach to rapid digital solution building in a recent post where I show how anyone can create useful tools without extensive technical knowledge: https://thoughts.jock.pl/p/build-internal-digital-solutions-fast-no-coding-required

Expand full comment
Anfernee's avatar

Nice! Inspiring me to build one!

Expand full comment
Xinran Ma's avatar

Looking forward to yours. It's a fun experiment.

Expand full comment
Wyndo's avatar

Love this!

I want to contribute mine too.

A todo list that celebrates your done list:

https://substack.com/@wyndo/note/c-100923620?r=bxno&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action

Planning to launch it on Vercel soon :)

Expand full comment
Xinran Ma's avatar

Amazing! You took the challenge to the next level!

Expand full comment
Evelyn So (Thinker & Co.)'s avatar

What database do you use?

Expand full comment
Xinran Ma's avatar

I did not integrate with a database for it :D

Expand full comment