Олександр Кузьменко Around IT 7 March 2025, 08:20

A Ukrainian IT guy used Grok 3 to create a minimalist app for his brother to learn English words. How he did it

Ukrainian Observability Engineer Yevgeny decided to test the Grok 3 AI chatbot from xAI in app development. To do this, he created a simple English Words Trainer app for learning new words in JavaScript.

In a comment to dev.ua, the developer noted that he is not a professional programmer and wanted to do something useful for his younger brother, who is learning English. According to him, Grok 3 felt «like a smart friend who really wants to help.»

How the idea to create an app using AI came about

«Recently, I decided to test Grok 3 from xAI and was pleasantly surprised by how it can help in development. To test its capabilities, I set myself the task of writing a simple but useful English words trainer. This is how English Words Trainer appeared — a minimalist application for learning new words, built exclusively on JavaScript, CSS, and HTML», — Yevgeny wrote on his LinkedIn.

He added that the simulator displays words, their transcription, and translation, can sound out words, and allows you to save them to dictionaries.

«I guess it’s worth starting with the fact that in real life I’m not a professional programmer. Yes, I have some experience writing scripts in different programming languages — sometimes for work, sometimes just out of curiosity — but this has never been my main business», — the developer said in a comment to dev.ua.

He said that before getting acquainted with xAI, he had already had the opportunity to try out various artificial intelligences: ChatGPT, Claude, BlackBox, Copilot. But all this was more for fun — to try, see what they can do, and, perhaps, learn something new. When Yevgeny read about Grok 3, he wanted to check how quickly and qualitatively this model could help create something truly functional, given the surrounding hype.

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According to the IT expert, the idea for a small website with words appeared quite quickly.

«My younger brother has just started actively studying English, and I thought: why not do something useful for him? That’s how the concept of a simple interface was born, which would allow the user to interact with English words — see them, hear the pronunciation, view the translation. In essence, it’s a kind of dictionary with basic functions. Of course, the Internet is full of similar mobile applications and online dictionaries, but I didn’t set myself the goal of creating a business project or startup. It was just an experiment — a test of the capabilities of new artificial intelligence», — explains Yevgeny.

What is English Words Trainer?

The developer says that in its current implementation, English Words Trainer is a site where words appear randomly, with transcription and translation. He also wanted to add buttons for interaction — for example, so that you can listen to the word or mark it as «already know».

«Grok 3 quickly offered a basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript structure. The first prototype was ready in just a few hours: a simple design, a few words in the code, buttons for listening via the SpeechSynthesis API, and switching words. But I didn’t stop there — I wanted to do something more convenient and interesting,» said Yevgeny.

Next, he asked Grok to add a sidebar with a history of viewed words. The idea was that the user could return to words they had already seen and listen to them again. Grok also did a brilliant job, the IT guy notes — the panel appeared with a search filter, and the data began to be stored in localStorage so as not to be lost after reloading the page.

«Then I thought: why not make the dictionary more flexible? So the words moved from JavaScript to a separate JSON file, which simplified their editing and addition,» the IT expert explained.

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Pros and cons of Grok 3 in development

Yevgeny said that he compared Grok 3 with other AIs he had used before. He notes that each of them has its own strengths and weaknesses. Here are some patterns the developer noticed:

ChatGPT is very good at generating text and can chew on complex concepts for a long time, but sometimes it is too verbose and doesn’t always immediately understand that I want specific code, not an explanation.
Claude seemed to me to be more restrained and precise in his answers, but he often avoided technical details, especially when it came to programming.
BlackBox and Copilot, on the other hand, are focused on code — they quickly produce ready-made solutions, but if I asked for something non-standard or to explain the logic, they could «get stuck» or give a superficial result.
And most importantly, Grok 3 has much larger free generation limits. I could spend hours asking questions, requesting code edits, and testing ideas without running into any limit messages.

Eugene says that Grok 3 impressed him with the balance between code and explanations.

«Its advantage is speed and clarity: for example, I simply indicated that I wanted a sidebar by drawing its prototype in Paint, and it immediately gave me working code with comments, repeating the design almost 1:1. Compared to ChatGPT, Grok is less „philosophical“, and compared to Copilot, it explains more deeply. Among the disadvantages, I would name the fact that sometimes it relies too much on my clarifications — if I formulated the request unclearly, the answer could be a little „off-topic“», — explains the IT expert.

In his opinion, these are minor drawbacks, because overall «Grok 3 felt like a smart friend who actually wants to help, not just shoot back.»

«In the end, the application turned out exactly as I imagined it at the beginning of development: simple, but functional. The main thing is that my brother liked it and even plans to use it», — says Yevhenii.

He added that he doesn’t plan to make money from English Words Trainer — for him, it was a way to test what Grok 3 was capable of and at the same time «do something useful» for others.

You can try out the English Words Trainer demo at this link. The developer has also published the project code on GitHub.

Although, despite various predictions, artificial intelligence is still not able to replace programmers, Yevgeny’s example shows that in 2025, AI can already help people with almost no programming skills create simple but useful personalized tools.