Why building a simple webapp can feel so hard

[@mohamedkhalif807]

Strangely, I really need this video. Over the past couple of days, I've felt overwhelmed trying to build a mobile app to test another startup idea, and I haven't been able to make any progress. Thank you for sharing this!

[@scott_itall8638]

What stack?

[@progressisbeautiful1541]

You will, just keep trying. Read official documentation, and combine it with AI. Do not use Copilot, but Chat GPT instead.

[@TheSilverGlow]

You are not ready to "test a startup idea"...first learn to code, and get reasonably good at it...imagine trying to write a novel, but you don't know the language...same thing for "start up ideas"...do the hard work first, then think about an idea.

[@etorty_dev]

I love the format of your content - short, to the point, and most importantly, makes one think about how it relates to their work.❤

[@TheSilverGlow]

I've been coding for 46 years. I cannot stress too strongly, that coding the "quick & dirty" is the worse way to code. Perfectionism has become a dirty word in the world of IT Fashion, its what "cool coders" do, right? Wrong! Go for as near as perfect as time and resources will allow you to. But doing the Quick & Dirty creates bad habits, and too often, that code becomes production. And we often think "I will clean this up later", but that day often never arrives. Going the Q&D route means you are not learning, and you are making refactoring work for yourself later....its not about quantity...its about QUALITY. Craft, don't hobble together...show some pride of authorship, craftsmanship, best practices...get a mentor!

[@renanrodrigues671]

It is incredible how a simple product can take all that effort especially when you are a single man team What help me is setting a clear MVP goal and test it as soon as possible but even that can take several months We have to be careful to not neglect other part of our lives which is a real danger if you have hyperfocus Setting deadlines simplyfing things and being pragmatic is a path I found to avoid being dragged by the rabbit hole Also as hard as it could be it is important to leave the desk and screen and exercise and do the other things you need to do in your routing because that is what will keep you sane to continue in long term

[@mehmatrix]

0:52 right is not always the best 1:51 its only as hard as you tell yourself 2:44 custom = slow 3:45 developers who make it look easy 4:28 arbitrary release dates 5:03 how to avoid repeating failures 5:46 a way to do it faster exists

[@borisbojic]

I’m in a similar process - I’m creating a pretty big application using Laravel 11 as Rest API and two front ends using Angular. Your videos keep me motivated not to give up with all the struggles 🙂

[@sadatmoya1016]

Bro your right about this, have experienced this and am sure as software developers we continue experience it , adding new features can be draining when one thinks it may take a few minutes and then it takes like more than a specific number of days

[@marl3x]

Hearing this was important to me. I always feel like I'm doing something wrong. I have these ideas that seem really simple and straightforward, but apparently I'm the only one doing it. There is no resources on the internet, or the tools I'm using are really buggy, and then I get stuck. Progress is really slow and it's demotivating. But the thing is, that the apps you see online weren't built in a day like the internet tries to make you believe they were. If development really was that easy AI really would have replaced us already. It's hard, and that's okay, you just got to keep going.

[@abhishekchetani2468]

I feel like this video is going to blow up in no time now. Highly relatable!!

[@michaeldeane4807]

The quick and dirty approach is great advice. Just get it working then improve it. It took me years to really appreciate this strategy.

[@rand0mtv660]

As long as that quick and dirty approach doesn't end up being the final one. What can easily happen is that you end up using that quick and dirty version as the final version and just never get the time to improve it. Less issue on personal projects, bigger issue in real projects where you might not get the time to improve things later. But yeah, for prototyping phase, just get it done. Refine immediately after that.

[@michaeldeane4807]

@@rand0mtv660 Just get it done. Refine it if the business or concept gets traction. Get it in front of an audience and testing ASAP. That’s the biggest advantage/disadvantage of 1 person teams. Searching for that profitable idea by iterating through many ideas. If one hits then mine that gold as deep as you can. Along the process of building on multiple ideas they tend to build systems to speed up the iteration cycles. No one wants to publish broken or unsecured software. The primary goal is finding an audience and profit.

[@CW91]

Q&D is only efficient for the very initial stages of a feature. It is always better to improve and refactor code structure early on before the codebase gets too big.

[@mazlanhalim9141]

Thank you for this, it feels so relatable hence I'm not alone 😅 All the best for your next 20 projects!

[@dovh49]

1. Use Pocketbase as an MPA with JS. 2. Use HURL for testing your MPA. 3. Use HTML-Form to progressively enhance the app for the parts of the MPA that you need more dynamic single page work to be done. 4. Use Web Components to build any front end state based functionality. 5.Use CSS that is already ready to go, like PicoCSS combined with a component library or make the component library yourself based off of some well used component library. 6. Value simple. Which means go back to the drawing board and rewrite some of your code to make it simpler after you've had time to think about it some more and when you understand the code better. Wa la! And a simple web app you'll have. Pocketbase can scale pretty well. If you need more scale than what pocketbase can handle consider Supabase or something similar.

[@ecofriend93]

Thanks for making this. All the best work your project. Hope it comes together. Happy New Year!

[@joelv4495]

Very good advice that puts a real-world perspective that's so refreshing after all the hype content so prevalent on YT. Earned a sub from me sir!

[@modemlooper]

Never do it the right way if you don’t know what you’re doing just pump it out. Especially if you’re by yourself, you need to get that product out as quick as possible.

[@Q-Productions23]

Can relate 100% Keep it up Sir!

[@coderbdev]

The timing of this video is insane for me. I had a major setback on one of my major features. I am not even sure I will be able to have that feature due to 3rd party APIs that are fighting me at every step.

[@progressisbeautiful1541]

I am just correcting my first framework website, that I've done a while ago. So it is true. Get things done in a messy way, and after a while, you will easily correct it if needed.

[@DavidTaylorM]

One thing I keep telling myself with web apps is to do the functionality before applying any styling. It never works out that way! I should listen to my own advice though because my current side project has probably changed CSS frameworks 3 times now and the functionality still isn't done.

[@nufh]

No. 1, I'm the kind of person who always strives for perfection. I struggle with it a lot, and it has caused me many delays. Letting go of that habit is hard. AI has helped me a lot because it can structure and fix my code.

[@Lalit-yw2tb]

Aaa. That quick and dirty approach usually becomes your final approach. I can guarantee for a fact that once you add a feature using the "dirty" approach, you are less likely to come back to it to fix it the right way because you think it works, why bother? But, when you go back to your codebase several months later to add a new feature which uses that feature in some way, you end up having to rewrite that feature with the correct approach on top of your new feature planned, so your one month feature edit becomes 2 months or more. Don't try to do quick and dirty approach because it is going to lead to so much pain down the road. Instead you should do the right approach, if it takes you 2 more days to implement, do that instead of racking your brain down the line for several weeks trying to understand what you wrote.

[@h0td0g]

Crazy how videos like this is still so relevant. The community now is flooded with so much “going from 0 to prod with xxx AI TOOOL” and it’s honestly misleading as heck!

[@yourlocalhuman3526]

Thanks for the advice

[@DinkLena]

Thanks for the forecast! I have a quick question: My OKX wallet holds some USDT, and I have the seed phrase. (alarm fetch churn bridge exercise tape speak race clerk couch crater letter). What's the best way to send them to Binance?

[@bale_1696]

Nice video

[@nathannoel9837]

Any recommendation on how to deal with legal terms for an online SaaS platform? I found some prewritten term options. My first SaaS as a solo developer.

[@mehmatrix]

Nice video.. thanks :) timestamps would be really appreciated :)

[@willi1978]

or just write in php instead of javascript

[@danh5637]

They made it difficult. All the frameworks and backend services and bla bla. Also JavaScript is an abomination.

[@m12652]

The thing I struggle with most is pixel paranoia... and the worst part of that is I usually end up scrapping the bits I end up most fixated on when I look to simplify...

[@_justnick]

I'll answer it for you: cause you just aren't good enough yet, and you want to be good too fast. Websites aren't trivial to make, contrary to what idiot youtube gurus will advertise you (become a full stack developer in 6 months!1!!! haha, fucking joke, there's talented people that have been in the business for years and years and they still don't advertise themselves as such)