Jess Lee

for The DEV Team

Posted on Apr 1

Join our April Fools Challenge for a chance at TEA-RRIFIC prizes!!!

#devchallenge #418challenge #jokes

Build software that is intentionally useless

Hello, and let’s get this out of the way right now: this is no joke!!

Tired of building world-changing, hyper-optimized production apps? Sick of reading about clean architecture, scalability, and practicality for a moment? Then we have the perfect challenge for you! It’s time to lean into the chaos of the internet: Welcome to the DEV April Fools Challenge. 🦄

Our Prompt: HTCPCP IYKYK

Your mandate for this challenge is to build something completely useless or silly. We want software that solves zero real-world problems. A CSS-only site that un-centers divs? Great. A volume slider that requires you to shake your phone to turn up the music? Awesome. Your only goal is to make us laugh, scratch our heads, or ask Why on earth did they build this? Make a fool of yourself and have fun with it!

Additional Prize Categories:

Best Google AI Usage: Tell us how you leveraged Google AI for this submission. Did you build with Antigravity, experiment in Google AI Studio, or use the Gemini CLI? Or is there a Google AI product embedded in your build such as the Gemini API or any Google Cloud product such as Cloud Run? Tell us all about your experience!
Best Ode to Larry Masinter: We’re talking teapots and intentional 418s.
Community Favorite: Awarded to one of the most popular submissions based on comments, reactions, overall quality, and final judge discretion.

Judging Criteria and Prizes

All submissions will be judged on the following:

Anti-Value Proposition: How delightfully useless, silly, or over-engineered is this project?
Creativity: Is the concept original or a hilariously bad take on a familiar problem?
Technical Execution: Ironically, building bad software sometimes takes good engineering. Is it functional in its dysfunction?
Writing Quality: Is the submission post clear, and does it tell a funny, compelling story about your project?

Prizes

We’ll select two winners for the overall prompt, and one winner for each additional prize category. Our five total winners will each receive:

A surprise teapot or coffee maker with appropriate fixings (approx. $50 USD value)
DEV++ Membership
Exclusive DEV Badge

All participants with a valid submission will receive a completion badge.

How To Participate

Publish a post on DEV using the submission template below. Your post should give us an overview of what you built and a demo of your project.

April Fools Challenge Submission Template

Please review our judging criteria, rules, guidelines, and FAQ page before submitting so you understand our participation guidelines and official contest rules such as eligibility requirements.

Important Dates

April 1: April Fools Challenge begins!
April 12 at 11:59pm PT: Submissions Due
April 16: Winners Announced

We can’t wait to see what crazy projects you come up with. Questions about the challenge? Drop them in the comments below.

Good luck!!

Top comments (32)

Julien Avezou • Apr 1

There are too many useful things out there, time to build something totally useless!! I feel that a unicorn might be born out of this challenge.

Jess Lee The DEV Team • Apr 1

Hahah yes VCs should definitely follow #418challenge

Ben Halpern The DEV Team • Apr 1

Absolutely

Adrika Gaur • Apr 2

Heyy Im a beginner and I only know basic antigravity, html and css, havent started js

Shadrack Baidoo • Apr 2

Gemini will guide you

Andrew Martin • Apr 2

To read this brought me grief. But in good faith I want to challenge your understanding of the goals of this coding challenge. "Anti value" explicitly can't intersect with unicorn philosophy. Because how can something "Without value" ever be subsumed by capital?
Would you try to build a unicorn business around the laughter of children? The feeling of sun on skin? The pride felt after a good high five? At least in my opinion, dev encourages us to seek joy that is not measured by the yardstick of value. Thinking outside that box means sitting with the discomfort of finding things that are beautiful, true, and financially worthless. Our lives have this everywhere if you know where to look! It was pop star Jennifer Lopez that held "Love don't cost a thing".
I doubt I made my point well enough to earn agreement. But I'll double down with a call to action nevertheless! Cast off the yardstick of value! Abandon it at the doorway to joy, and don't play with it except to swing it around like a sword, pretending to be a warrior or some such. Are not Unicorns much more beautiful in the fantasies of children than the fantasies of shareholders?

Konark Sharma • Apr 1

I thought my website crashed. This is the original UI of Dev.to isn't it?😂 @jess @ben

Amazing challenge. Building something useless. I wonder what amazing developers with their highest productivity will make.😅

Ben Halpern The DEV Team • Apr 1

The original UI was intentionally retro so not totally off

Konark Sharma • Apr 1

Nice Nailed it. It looks TEA-RRRRRRIFICCCCCC. I think I need to found useless asap now. Making Tea with no tea. Does it sound useless😂?

Did you code this specific page like this or any css attributes that makes it different from other pages.

Ben Halpern The DEV Team • Apr 1

It’s just different CSS

Yacham Duniya (CRAN3) • Apr 1

For a minute there i thought my browser got blasted into the past😂

Ben Halpern The DEV Team • Apr 1

🪄

Paulo Henrique • Apr 1

I'm having Geocities PTSD

(please make this layout official)

Alex Stone • Apr 1

Already submitted my entry! I built a ChatGPT prompt that generates the worst financial advice possible — it told me to invest my savings in beanie babies and NFTs of screenshots of my bank account. The code is just a prompt string with instructions to be maximally chaotic. No server needed, no framework, no dependencies. Just vibes and bad decisions. The prompt IS the product. 🫠