How I Stumbled Into This Pepere Thing
Okay so just last week, like Tuesday maybe? My friend Tom messages me totally outta nowhere. Says “hey you messing with Pepere yet?” And I’m just sitting there like… pepere? What even? Sounds like pepper but spelled stupid. Figured it was some foodie trend or maybe a typo. Tom laughs his head off, calls me clueless. Typical Tom. Anyway, he drops a name of some app or tool called Pepere. Doesn’t explain zip.
So obviously, first thing I do is what anyone does. Google. Type in “Pepere”. Hit enter feeling smart. And guess what? Nothing useful pops up! Seriously. A bunch of weird dictionary entries, something about Belgian grandpas? No joke. Scroll scroll scroll. Tom texts back “dude not spelling it right, it’s all lower case”. Whatever. Try “pepere” this time. Still trash results. Feeling annoyed now. Add “tech tool” to the search. Nada. Might’ve cursed at my screen. Just saying.
About ready to give up, but remember Tom mentioned Github. Yeah that place. Go there, punch in “pepere” in the search bar. BOOM. Little green logo pops right up. Okay, finally getting somewhere. Click the first result. Looks official. Starts reading. Description says stuff like “simple state thingy” and “uncomplicated changes”. Still sounds like gibberish. Scroll down, see code examples. Looks kinda like JavaScript but… smaller? Minimalist vibes.
Thought “alright, how hard can this be?” Hit the install thing. Opened my terminal. Typed npm install pepere and crossed my fingers. Felt a moment of pure panic waiting. But… it worked! Green checkmarks appeared. Did a little chair dance. Victory.
Opened up a fresh project folder. Made a new file called . Feeling adventurous. Copied the most basic code snippet from the docs:
- import pepere from ‘pepere’
- const store = pepere(0)
- *(count => count + 1)
Ran that bad boy with Node. Hold my breath… it logs “1”. YES! Simple state update. Felt like I cracked some ancient code. Tried adding more stuff:
- *(newValue => *(`Hey! New value: ${newValue}`))
- *(5)
Run it again. Boom! It logs “Hey! New value: 5”. Suddenly it clicks. This “Pepere” thing? Basically just a tiny box to keep track of one piece of changing info. You set it, you get it, you can watch it change. No crazy boilerplate, no mountains of setup. K.I.S.S. – Keep It Simple, Stupid. That’s Pepere.
Took it a step further. Made a mini web counter with plain HTML. Loaded Pepere via CDN. Few lines of JS:
- Store holding the count
- Button that calls * to bump it up
- Display element watching the store with subscribe
Clicked that button like a maniac. Watched the number go up! Worked perfectly. Still super lightweight, barely feel it. Way less hassle than the big state management dinosaurs everyone talks about.
Is it gonna solve world hunger? Nah. But if you need just one thing to change and you want zero headaches? Pepere seems neat. Still wrapping my head around why it feels good, but honestly, sometimes simple just wins. Gonna poke at it more next week maybe.
