How it all started

Back when I was learning the basics, I loved tinkering on CodePen, building silly demos and sharing them with friends. I would often run out of ideas for what to build, and at the time, CodePen didn't have coding challenges, so I found myself looking elsewhere for inspiration.

So I built Codier. It started as a university project and became a fully-fledged platform with help from my then-colleagues—now friends—Jack and Bala. You can read the full origin story on the original launch post.

Taking a moment to reflect

Looking back, there are so many things I'm proud of.

By the time Codier closed, it had grown to 26,174 registered users, 272 community-created challenges, and tens of thousands of unique code creations.

Early on in our journey, we acquired sponsorship from Stickermule and Hashnode. Each partnership introduced Codier to new communities and offered prizes for winning creations.

We had educational institutions in the United Kingdom, Brazil, and Sweden creating challenges on Codier for their students to solve.

It was also incredibly humbling to see contributions from people I follow and whose work I admire over the years.

We never monetised Codier in any significant way. Thanks to our employer at the time, Clock, and later Northflank, hosting costs were covered throughout its lifetime. Codier gave me the opportunity to learn how to build products people enjoyed using and grow a community.

Saying goodbye

It's astonishing to think about how much has changed in eight years—the way we wrote code for the web in 2018 is almost unrecognisable in 2026, and Codier's numbers told the same story.

Until a couple of years ago, Codier's usage was steadily growing without marketing spend or promotion. People used it and shared their creations on social media. The platform was popular because it was useful.

Since the introduction of AI in developer workflows, registrations have dropped significantly. There are also a few similar platforms that have popped up over the years, creating more competition.

The reality is that many developers no longer write code by hand in the same way they did just a few years ago, and Codier naturally became less relevant as those habits changed.

During that time, we also had less and less time to dedicate to developing the platform, building new features, and adapting the product to the changing landscape.

That's the long and short of it.

I'm incredibly thankful to everyone who contributed to Codier over the years.

Until next time.