How to spend 15 years perfecting a product
It's Alex, creator of Refactoring.Guru. A few weeks ago, I emailed you about my new project GitByBit . This is its origin story: how an indie dev with no team, no ad budget, and one aging traffic source tried to build something useful while the dev world was being torn and rearranged all around the globe.
If you've ever wanted to launch something of your own, you may find some useful insights into how to pick an idea and what to consider when you begin, along with a few real numbers. Skip this if you don't like postmortems or cringy humor.
Quick takeaways from this episode: If you want to launch something, start by finding users for your product first. If there's no product yet, pretend that it's already built, then think about what you'd do next. Do THAT immediately instead of writing code. Also, use your unfair advantage. You may have it, but dismiss it as unfair 🥹. Use it before others do!
Quick recap of the last one: Over the last three years, I built a free Git course with a twist: it runs inside your code editor (assuming you use VS Code, Cursor, or one of their clones), so you learn or refresh your Git skills by using it in a real dev environment on your local computer. It's well-designed, illustrated, and perfect as a refresher. Link: GitByBit.com .
In the winter of 2023, I had a blind strong determination to create yet another educational product for developers.
Up until that point, I'd been living the bumpy life of an independent developer and educator, trying to stay afloat while making cool educational materials for developers and surviving never-ending, life-altering events such as a revolution, the birth of a child, a pandemic, and a full-scale war in my country.