{"slug": "i-shipped-a-python-learning-app-with-zero-money-here-s-every-free-tool-i-used", "title": "I Shipped a Python Learning App with Zero Money — Here's Every Free Tool I Used", "summary": "A 19-year-old developer from Bangladesh built and shipped Codino, a Python learning app with an offline IDE, AI tutor, Jupyter-style notebook, gamification, and data science library support, on the Google Play Store with a total budget of $0. The developer used free tools including Sora Editor, Pyodide, Skulpt, Google Gemini API, Groq, OpenRouter, Supabase, and Jetpack Compose to create the app without any funding or team.", "body_md": "Here is your Medium post, fully written in publication-ready markdown:\n\nmarkdown# I Shipped a Python Learning App with Zero Money — Here's Every Free Tool I Used\n\n*A 19-year-old developer from Bangladesh. No funding. No team. Just free tools, free APIs, and stubbornness.*\n\nI'm Simanta. I built **Codino** — a Python learning app with an offline IDE, AI tutor, Jupyter-style notebook, gamification, and data science library support — and published it on the Google Play Store.\n\nMy total budget: **$0.**\n\nThis is the complete breakdown of every single tool I used, why I chose it, and exactly how it fits into the app. No fluff.\n\n| What I needed | Free tool I used |\n|---|---|\n| Code editor with syntax highlight | Sora Editor |\n| Python in the browser/notebook | Pyodide + Skulpt |\n| AI tutor with generous free tier | Google Gemini API |\n| Extra AI fallback providers | Groq, OpenRouter |\n| Backend (no-cost) | Supabase free tier |\n| UI framework | Jetpack Compose |\n| App distribution | Google Play Store |\n\nBuilding a code editor from scratch for Android is a nightmare. Syntax highlighting, auto-indentation, bracket matching, line numbers — all of that is extremely hard to implement yourself.\n\n**Sora Editor** is a free, open-source rich-code-editor library for Android. I plugged it directly into Jetpack Compose and got a fully working IDE in hours instead of months.\n\nWhat it gave me for free:\n\nIf you're building any kind of coding or text-heavy Android app, use Sora Editor. There is no reason to reinvent it.\n\n**GitHub:** [github.com/Rosemoe/sora-editor](https://github.com/Rosemoe/sora-editor)\n\nFor the **lesson-based IDE** (the basic code runner students use during lessons), I used **Skulpt**.\n\nSkulpt is a JavaScript implementation of Python. It runs Python code entirely in the browser/WebView — no server, no internet, no waiting.\n\nWhy Skulpt over something heavier:\n\nThe limitation: it doesn't support advanced libraries like NumPy. But for the lesson environment, it's perfect.\n\nFor **Codino's notebook feature** (the JupyterLab-style cell interface), I needed something more powerful — something that could actually run NumPy, Pandas, and Matplotlib.\n\nThat's where **Pyodide** comes in.\n\nPyodide is CPython compiled to WebAssembly. It runs **real Python** inside a browser. It supports 20+ scientific libraries including:\n\n`numpy`\n\n`pandas`\n\n`matplotlib`\n\n`scikit-learn`\n\nI embedded Pyodide inside an Android WebView and built the cell-based notebook UI on top of it using Jetpack Compose for the outer shell.\n\nThe result: a fully working, offline-capable data science notebook on Android — for free.\n\nThis is the feature that separates Codino from every other Python app on the Play Store. Most apps don't touch real libraries. I got them all for free through WebAssembly.\n\n**Website:** [pyodide.org](https://pyodide.org)\n\nEvery AI-powered learning app charges for the AI. Mimo charges. Sololearn charges. I didn't want to do that.\n\nGoogle's **Gemini API** has a generous free tier — enough to give every Codino user real AI hints, full lesson explanations, and code understanding without paying anything.\n\nHow I use it inside Codino:\n\nThe free tier limits are high enough that most users never hit them in a day of learning.\n\nGemini is great, but having only one AI provider is risky. If it goes down or a user hits the daily limit, the AI feature breaks completely.\n\nSo I added **Groq** as a fallback.\n\nGroq is a free AI inference API that runs open-source models (like LLaMA and Mixtral) at an almost unbelievable speed. It's the fastest AI API I've ever used.\n\nMy multi-provider strategy:\n\nThe user never sees any of this. They just get a response. The system handles it silently in the background.\n\nThis is how you build AI reliability for zero dollars. Don't depend on one provider.\n\nUser accounts, streaks, leaderboard data, XP progress — all of that needs a backend.\n\n**Supabase** is an open-source Firebase alternative with a very generous free tier:\n\nI used Supabase to store:\n\nIt cost nothing.\n\nThe only way to make a free app *feel* premium is to make it look and animate beautifully.\n\n**Jetpack Compose** is Google's modern Android UI toolkit. It's free, open-source, and very powerful for building smooth, animated UIs.\n\nEverything you see in Codino — the dark UI, the smooth lesson transitions, the animated streak counter, the glowing leaderboard — was built purely with Compose and its animation APIs.\n\nNo paid UI libraries. No design assets I paid for.\n\nThis is the only money I spent.\n\nThe Google Play Store has a **one-time developer registration fee of $25**. After that, you can publish unlimited apps forever.\n\nThat $25 is the only real cost of building and shipping Codino.\n\nBuilding with free tools is not the easy path. It comes with real challenges:\n\nBut none of these problems cost money. They cost time. And time is the one resource a 19-year-old gap year developer has.\n\nThe biggest lie in software development is that you need money to build something real.\n\nYou don't.\n\nYou need Google, GitHub, patience, and a willingness to read documentation at 2am.\n\nCodino is proof. A Python learning app with an offline IDE, AI tutor, Jupyter notebook, data science libraries, gamification, leaderboard, and free certificates — built by one person, from Bangladesh, with zero dollars.\n\nIf I can do it, so can you.\n\n*Codino is available on the Google Play Store. Search \"Codino Learn Python\" or click here.*\n\n*Follow for more honest posts about building apps from scratch with no budget.*", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-shipped-a-python-learning-app-with-zero-money-here-s-every-free-tool-i-used", "canonical_source": "https://dev.to/xmadmaxdx/i-shipped-a-python-learning-app-with-zero-money-heres-every-free-tool-i-used-djl", "published_at": "2026-06-16 08:08:54+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-16 08:17:13.267353+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["developer-tools", "artificial-intelligence", "large-language-models", "ai-tools", "ai-products"], "entities": ["Simanta", "Codino", "Google Play Store", "Sora Editor", "Pyodide", "Skulpt", "Google Gemini API", "Supabase"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-shipped-a-python-learning-app-with-zero-money-here-s-every-free-tool-i-used", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-shipped-a-python-learning-app-with-zero-money-here-s-every-free-tool-i-used.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-shipped-a-python-learning-app-with-zero-money-here-s-every-free-tool-i-used.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-shipped-a-python-learning-app-with-zero-money-here-s-every-free-tool-i-used.jsonld"}}