I was talking with a friend recently about what it takes to make software successful. Specifically, indie apps and ideas. Over the years I've waffled between two sides of a spectrum. On the one hand I want to build great interfaces based on insight from real world customers.
When you first start your career you quickly realize that much of your work depends on execution. You learn something and you figure out how to do it. You get better, you find efficiencies. For me, as a teenager, this meant honing my craft. I tinkered with graphic design, figured
With all the AI tools available to us, it seems that a designer has no need for the archaic, simple, not auto-completing, software of the past. Why bother with something so trite as designing when AI can just do it all for you? This week I've been
Maybe it's happened to you. You reach a point where you pull up short and don't know the point of all your endeavors. Life is like that at times. It continues, relentlessly, and seems to demand, eat up, take everything you've got. At some
I was recently listening to a podcast episode from Cal Newport, where they outlined AI rules for developers. Namely, that a developer should approach AI use carefully, with intentionality, in a way that will ensure they aren't losing the abilities they have, and are benefitting from where AI
It's been a year since I called the death of Figma. I'm still not sure if I was right, but the stock market seems to agree with me at the moment. Since then I've spent most of my time designing, and developing, with Claude
Some days creativity is easy. I know what I want to get done, and all the pieces come together in the right way. I might be tired, I might be worn out from the effort, but it's effortless. I love those days, and they're part of
Other than earlier's post, it's been a while since I wrote. A funny thing happens when you get out of the habit. Your next post—those next words you plan to publish, grow larger in estimation. You start to imagine they must be perfect, that the
Last week I decided to try something. I had an idea for a new app, pulled up Claude Code, and began building. The concept wasn't theoretical, I knew what I had in mind, and wanted to get to a solution immediately. Now, roughly a week later, I have
The web has come full circle. Twenty years ago I'd build a website in Flash, or HTML, and chuck it online via FTP. The result was messy, prone to getting hacked, and not anywhere close to professional. But, what it lacked in production-ready quality, it made up
You might feel like the world left you behind. Somewhere, in the chaos of the last month, year, or decade, everyone moved on and figured it out—and you're the last one holding the bag. Two seconds on Instagram will reveal that others are happier, richer, funnier, smarter,
Building software is a massive guessing game. You hope that what you're building will help somebody solve a problem. You don't know, though. Until your code hits the real world, gets used by people with real needs, it's all just theoretical. Time and again