A window into my soul (skip to the next heading if you want to read tutorial. otherwise, continue for the feels)

Low-key this is like one of those recipe posts that start with way too much exposition cause Google search has broken SEO that prioritizes length when all you want is the ingredients and instructions god*mmit.

Guys I rarely, rarely, rarely, almost never touch frontend code ever.

I started out as a backend engineer, primarily working in Java, pivoted to devops with Kubernetes, and then switched into web3 devrel, spending most of my time in Solidity.

There’s the claim if you can code in one language, you can code in every language. Yes, the learning curve is significantly smaller, but up-skilling in a completely different part of the stack is incredibly difficult if you’re coding in a vacuum (i.e., no mentorship or community).

And, that’s kind of where I find myself now. Wanting so badly to participate in the design space of what Farcaster frames can be, but severely under-leveled in my ability to quickly iterate because of a few key factors:

1. I can’t remember the last time I touched Vercel

2. I’ve never worked in a professional environment with Javascript, so I don’t really know how to debug things in Javascript (other than your classic console.log(`what the fck is this variable ${x}`))

3. Stepping into a devrel role has given me horrible imposter syndrome, which makes it feel much harder to ask for help - the public figure aspect makes it feel like I’m supposed to be some sort of expert, and when I’m not, it feels like now everyone knows I failed

4. Stepping into a devrel role has pulled me out of a full time engineering team, so I don’t get to reap the benefits of partner coding, regular code reviews, and a JIRA board of scoped out tickets easing me into whatever monster of a project I’m trying to get myself into

5. Every Farcaster frame tutorial I’ve been able to find kind of just assumes you know how to do all the deployment sh*t already (like I’m sorry, I have zero clue what KV_URL is other than something that is associated with Vercel I think??? aka, see point 1 above )

Anyways, there’s a bunch of different reasons that makes my fear of frontend code (and by extension, creating a Farcaster frame) feel like something I need to discuss with a therapist. But, you know, therapy is expensive, a good therapist is hard to find, and a good therapist who can detangle the mess that is my relationship with Javascript is probably someone who doesn’t take insurance, and I’d rather spend my income on NYC rent than mental health.

ANYWAYS, this is all an incredibly long ramble to say two things:

1. Instead of therapy, I’m just gonna bait Twitter and now Farcaster to help diagnose me

2. I’m gonna over-explain all the mini-steps in building a frame for all the dummies out there like me who clone an example repo and then immediately die because the README is like haha deploy and you’re like haha okay *sweats in how do I do that*

The dumbest guide ever part 1

This is the guide for all you homies like me who got addicted to TikTok and are like LOL WHAT IS AN ATTENTION SPAN.

We’re talking about the very basics of how to use the poll frames tutorial.

What is a Farcaster frame?

Farcaster actually does an amazing 101 video here. The dumbed down version is basically take those image previews/captions you get when you post a link on Twitter and make it ✨ i n t e r a c t i v e ✨

For example, rather than just viewing an NFT in a post, you can mint it right there. This is wild because it’s creating an entirely new and engaging way of interacting with social media rather than being just another clone™️. (check this choose your adventure one out)

If you’re horny for something tech-ier or length-ier, check out this post by my work bestie Christian Montoya.

Okay here comes the dumb part

So, the Farcaster docs has a tutorial on creating a poll. If you’re like me, you just skipped all the words, went to the Github repo, clicked on the demo URL, and was like HUH, I thought this was supposed to take me to an example of a frame.

WRONG.

It takes you to a page where you can create an example frame, which you can then cast yourself. None of this was obvious to my “skim everything TikTok brain”.

This is actually the step-by-step

1. Navigate to the poll creation site (it’s the image above)

2. Fill out your dream poll questions and options (I did “How would you greet a frog”)

3. Click create, you’ll be redirected to a list of all polls ever created ever

4. Click on the poll you created

5. Copy the link URL

6. Paste the link URL in your cast

7. Hit cast

If you followed all of those steps, you should get something like this below

The end

Emily, that was kind of unsatisfying

I know, but this is only part 1. I just wanted to vent about why the frames tutorial in the docs was so unsatisfying to me.

Anyways, my plans for part 2 and beyond is to answer the other dumb questions like:

1. How do I deploy?

2. What line of code is attributed to what screen and button that I’m seeing?

3. How can I customize this repo?

4. Can you explain all the other frame starter kits?

5. Are frontend engineers actually the sexiest engineers?

And here are the final dumb steps as part of the endless shill that is my life:

1. Follow me on Twitter until FC gets popular enough that I can retire that account

2. Follow me on Farcaster

3. Join Frogcaster 🐸 🐸 🐸 🐸 🐸 🐸 🐸 🐸 🐸 🐸 🐸