I've put most of Quickly's source code on Github with instructions and rules on how to use the code.
If you're planning on making a schedule app using Quickly features, I also hope you reach out to me at franca@castedo.com so I can connect you to other people making schedule apps. Working on a team is invaluable and I made multiple time/effort management mistakes with Quickly that might have been avoided with more people.
Thanks and general advice for LHS students
Hi! I'm Franca Ellerman and I was in the class of 2023 at Lexington High School, MA and am in the class of 2027 at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science.
I developed Quickly for LHS during my sophomore and junior year summers, but I need to thank
I remember in sophomore year thinking that Ben Borgers was so cool for getting so many people to use his app and having such beautiful web design, and that there was no way I could make something that cool. Actually, I thought a lot of people were so cool and that I could never be like them.
It's no coincidence that LHS students have made at least seven schedule apps since Blocks. We've got a lot of ambitious, smart, talented people here. That's mostly a good thing (trust me; I hated the "chill" high school I attended for a year). But it means you need to learn how to not be the best, smartest person while still knowing you can be good and smart at what you do. Most smart people only really learn they're not the "best" in college. You're ahead of the curve!
But I get it. FOMO, social pressure, and social validation are all at their heights in high school. It's nearly impossible to ignore your peers (or parents) all obsessing over college applications and competitions. You might rationally know that, especially if you want to go into a tech field, your college does not matter nearly as much as what you actually did with your life and time in high school. And you might also know that the college admissions process is incredibly unfair (coming from someone who benefited from many of the ways in which it's unfair). But the little primate brain in you will stress anyways, and I don't know to avoid that because I didn't. But I can tell you that once you're finished, you'll accept wherever you're going and eventually find some reason for why you'd actually rather go there.
And that's when you'll reflect on how those things you did in high school for college applications or social validation have shaped you much more than a college acceptance. I'll admit 1,200 users and creating something real that real people use and appreciate gave me self-confidence not just in tech, but in general, too. Our generation lacks so much self-confidence (possibly because of social media and media in general) which has to be a big cause of our terrible mental health. After your support net, your self-confidence is what gives you hope and trust that things will get better during tough times. Without self-confidence, when people hate you or spread lies about you (or your app, funnily enough), your first instinct will be to mirror that negativity to yourself.
That's why my #1 advice for LHS students is to find the activities/classes that build your self-esteem. That doesn't mean only doing things you're already good at—it means having those activities that make you feel good about yourself so you can have the confidence to try new activities you suck at without needing to be immediately "the best" at them.
Maybe making a schedule app could be the activity that builds your self-esteem. Or maybe it could be the activity you feel initially "bad" at, but if you work on a team, you can still contribute while having fun and improving your skills. And even if you think you can make a schedule app on your own like everyone else has, I really do recommend working with other people if you can. I might be biased, but if I was working with someone else on Quickly who could worry about marketing and testing (so not even necessarily coding!) while I work on features and fix bugs, I think Quickly could have taken over like Blocks and Daily did. But more importantly, as social animals, working with other people is basically what we're built to do and what makes us happy.
