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1-month challenge: D-28

For context check out my previous posts

As expected I received more replies to my customer discovery inquiries in the days after. Not that many though; 3 more from Twitter. Reddit really didn't work out. In the past I got more luck using their DM feature, but they must have changed something when they replaced it with their new chat.

Anyhow, after getting this additional feedback, and spending some time researching current options for reselling code (Codecanyon and such), I feel pretty sold on not doing a code marketplace. Or at least not one like the ones that exist today. They're super low-quality. It's amazing to think that, for instance, TailwindUI, which is maybe 3% of a final website, sells for $249. On the other hand, I found a "script", which is actually a whole codebase for a Youtube clone, for a mere $18, when it would cost many thousands of dollars to develop it from scratch. I think the main reasons for the discrepancy are as follows:

  • few people want to make a Youtube clone, so the market is small. But TailwindUI is flexible by nature and can be used for any site, so demand is higher, and therefore price too.
  • as I mentioned earlier, TailwindUI is of much higher quality, or at least it is assumed so because devs have come to trust the brand and their team.
  • the value that TailwindUI provides is easier to assess and is higher. For a dev who knows Tailwind, using the kit is just a matter of copy/pasting and then customizing a few lines. No long term maintenance needs. When it comes to the Youtube script, learning its intricacies would take dozens of hours, customizations would be difficult, and accumulated technical debt assuredly high. All in all a dev would probably think "I'd rather build this myself from scratch", and then use TailwindUI as a shortcut.

I also gave Blitz and Keystone a second try. Compared to DivJoy, they seem to provide a similar amount of value, but in different areas. Blitz particularly: you can boostrap a react codebase with integrated backend for all it takes to type "blitz new app", and it comes with DB w/ API and auth, among others. I think the value DivJoy provides in the frontend, Blitz provides in the backend. It's fairly easy to learn, too. One concept I liked but is currently underdeveloped is recipes. They say they took the idea from Gatsby, but Gatsby plugins are still very manual to install. In comparison, Blitz recipes are also a one-command setup, followed by prompts. A breeze.

Takeaways/random things I learned from these few days:

  • there is no correlation between lines of code and value. Value comes from the perception of how much time was saved, how easy to it to use and to maintain. This transpires through code quality, support and documentation.
  • reknown developers can sell higher-price code more easily, because other devs trust the quality
  • devs need to be provided with code that is sufficiently easy to learn and customize that they won't feel like starting from scratch is faster
  • the majority of devs use DivJoy to make landing pages, not apps
  • devs like to use premade code to learn new techs
  • the combinations of techs/frameworks/packages devs use as their stacks are infinite
  • tools like Webflow and Bubble are great for designers but awful for devs, especially backend devs, because they put an emphasis on the design element which doesn't come naturally (that's why we have designers!). So in a way it's easier for a designer to build a website with no code than it is for a dev.
  • corrolary to the above, devs want tools that allow them to build sites without design skills

My next steps:

  • I feel like I have a good idea what tools devs can choose from to accelerate development, but I can't see the gaps. Why, despite all these tools being available, would it still take a few months to build a full-feature app (assuming specs and designs are complete)? I should take a deep dive into where time is spent.
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