Sorry about the title
The title is rough but when I thought about the title of this blog post, the idea came out instantly. My inner self did not hesitate on naming GitHub Spark a joke so I decided to use it as title.
V0, Lovable
I have been playing with v0 and Lovable for rapid prototyping of apps. They are quite good generating frontend apps based on just an idea or a minimum set of requirements. I used them both to get ideas on how to implement the Job Architecture Management App and both delivered good quality.
Comparing Paid Plans of AI Coding Tools
I have been quite restricted by my current plan of Claude Pro. When using Claude Code for over an hour or so, I quickly run out of tokens and I have to wait at least 3 hours. I decided to compare most popular plans for coding agents: Copilot, Windsurf, Cursor, and also the next tier of Claude ($100 USD). I ended up choosing Copilot and I paid $39 USD for their Pro+ so that I can use Opus but really what convinced me when I compared this plan to the other ones was GitHub Spark. I navigated through their website and I got the same bells and whistles as in Lovable and V0: Dream it, See it, Ship it. That’s their headline. I was like wow. This is worth it. Let’s do it.
The joke
There was something interesting when I was navigating the pages of GitHub Spark. I recall seeing something about microapps (or something along those lines). I did not pay much attention because I was in love with the idea that I could get a V0 or Lovable in addition to the premium models for $39 USD. Also I told myself with V0 or Lovable, you also build small apps, you still need to take care of the backend plumbing for them to be production-ready.
This was different, though, I tried to generate a blog. A simple girly blog for my daughter. It failed miserably. It could not create a homepage. To be fair, it did it in the second attempt (sarcasm). It generated 3 files: App.tsx, index.html, and index.css. The blog was honestly ugly (I’m being nicer here).
I truly wondered myself how is it possible that a reputable technology company like GitHub can put something like this out?
The sad thing is that their marketing website is really good. It convinced me in a blink of an eye. Their frontend app looks as polished as V0 and Lovable. The functionality is a joke. A total joke. Hopefully the will iterate super fast and make it functional. Otherwise no one is going to use it.