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12 Comments

2 Year Deadline

This post is to set out a commitment I have to myself. As of now, I am working at a corporate job. My contract finishes in two years time exactly, at which point I want to have created a lifestyle business on the side.

I know this will be an ambitious undertaking as of right now I have minimal coding experience (I can create a decent functioning landing page). To this end I wanted to ask: what programming language should I prioritise in order to create a SaaS product?

As mentioned in my first post, I am just starting out and looking to get to know more people in the space. So if you fancy getting to know someone new, ping me a message!

  1. 2

    Laravel is a good framework for full SaaS. Plus PHP is a very tolerant language for beginners.

    • The learning curve is steep if you have no background in programming.
    1. 1

      Thanks for your response! I found your most recent post a very interesting read and gleaned a lot from it and so am seeking to action some of your advice i.e. create whilst in full-time employment!

      Would you have a recommendation on a resource to use to come to grips with these? Or would you recommend following YouTube tutorials?

        1. 1

          I second laracasts, it is a fantastic resource for Laravel. It also has some general PHP/JS/CSS/SQL etc

          It is not fully free though, but it is not that expensive either

          1. 1

            To add to this there's more than enough free content on laracasts to get you to a good point where you can do far more than just a landing page. Recommend it definitely

            1. 1

              I will definitely check it out!

  2. 1

    My co-founder and I are basically doing the same thing. We actually met on IH. We founded https://coffeepals.co and are well on our way to ramen profitability. If you have an idea, use a no-code product such as bubble.io and you can learn it much easier and get it off the ground much quicker. Also, make sure you validate your idea first. This could be creating a landing page or finding forums where people are trying to solve a problem. That's what we did with CoffeePals and we had over 700 sign-ups before we launched!

    Goodluck and welcome!

    1. 1

      That's epic Chris! I checked out your website and it looks great - congratulations. How long did it take you guys?

      Thanks for the suggestions!

      1. 1

        We started the project in March but it took us almost 2 months to get approved in the Microsoft Teams store. Our MVP probably took 3-4 months.

  3. 1

    Python is easier to learn than Javascript in my opinion. It has web frameworks (Django, Flask) that can be integrated with AI/Machine learning natively (PyTorch, Tensorflow). Kivy and Beeware for native app development (although they are not widely used).
    You can build 3D animation (Blender), you can even make games with it (PyGame) and program robots (ROS) if you ever think about branching out.

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