2022 – 2025
CSA-Savior
Sharing with other developers.
- Role
- Creator and maintainer
- Hardest problem
- Keeping a free site fast and easy to find as it grew.
- Result
- More than 30,000 learners every two weeks at its height, and about 20% more pages per visit after SEO.
The question
Students are often tasked with solving problems on CodeHS or similar platforms. One of our strongest tools as developers is learning from one another. How could I make my work easy for others to explore?
The approach
CSA-Savior started as a small repository for my work. I noticed traffic and stars trickling in and decided to build the web frontend. Instead of hosting my solutions directly on the website, I use a small custom wrapper to request Java files as users navigate, keeping initial page loads fast and my costs at zero.
As it grew, the original frontend started to show its age. I started benchmarking slow initial page loads and network bloat, and reviewing an unintuitive UI. I migrated to a statically bundled Next.js project and made an effort to decrease bundle size and implement basic SEO.
The outcome
- Learners every two weeks, at its height
- 30,000+
- Pages per visit, eight weeks before versus after SEO
- +20%
What I took from it
Looking after something that strangers relied on for years taught me patience, both when implementing requested features and when maintaining what already exists. I still maintain the project today.