I Built a URL Shortener in a Week.

Weeks 1 through 5 had a new concept every day.

Week 6 was different. One project. Six days. Start to finish.

The goal: build a URL shortener — something like bit.ly — entirely from scratch, in Python, without any web framework, database, or tutorial to follow. Design it first, build it, add analytics, write a README, ship it to GitHub, share it publicly, and improve it from feedback.

This week taught me more about how software actually gets made than any single concept lesson so far.

Day 36 — Design Before Code