Art, Bots and Empathy

Hey there! I’m Maurice Cherry, and I’m the newest member of the Glitch team.

I first got started on the web back in the mid 90s learning to code by tinkering around with HTML on Geocities, and I love how Glitch brings back those same feelings of fun, exploration, and community when it comes to the Web.

The spark for creativity can come at any time, and Glitch makes the process of coding and building easy and approachable no matter your skill level. To show you what I mean, let’s take a look at a typical day on Glitch!

Glitch can obviously be used as a sandbox to demo cool new tech. Take Ada Rose Cannon’s Comlink example for instance. She’s created a remixable template app for exposing APIs in iframes allowing you to create APIs where the information is stored locally but accessed from other websites using the Comlink RPC library.

Contrast that to this stunning art project from the Immigration Co/Lab Interactive Showcase from the Tribeca Film Institute. It’s a 360-degree immersive experience that follows a water droplet through its epic migration journey.

It’s also great to see people using technology to help others. Like this anxiety check-in bot created by Elisa. It’s an exciting way to use bots for self-care purposes. This bot was created using Botkit, an open-source toolkit from the team at Howdy.

But so far, these have all been creations by individuals. However, Glitch can be used for collaboration too. We are even seeing it used in classroom settings. Here, Liz Krane uses Glitch to teach almost 30 developers in her intro to JavaScript workshop!

I’ve been fascinated to see how people are using the same tool to create a breadth of interesting and useful creations. Whether it’s to scratch an itch and create a tool that’s useful for you, expressing yourself by creating art, or helping others overcome anxiety or learn something new.

We created Glitch as a powerful but comfortable and fun way to experiment with code. Whether you’re new to coding or you’re a seasoned professional, Glitch is a place where you can express yourself. And if you ever get stuck, just “raise your hand” and ask for help from the Glitch community!

What will you make on Glitch today? Respond here or tweet us (@glitch) and show us what you’re creating!