How much value is there in knowing code for an indie hacker?
The past two years I learned HTML, CSS/SASS, JS, React, Next.js. I recently found IndieHackers and was excited because it was what I wanted to do but now I'm just confused and discouraged. I was going to learn backend next, but now I see all these people building businesses with no-code tools. I feel so demoralized like I wasted 2 years learning to code. I don't know what to do, like should I try to become full stack dev or just learn no-code tools? What can I do with these skills people can't do already with platforms and tools? It seems like the only use is to work for a big company which I never wanted to do in the first place.
Trending on Indie Hackers
While its true that others can build businesses with no-code they do not have anywhere near the flexibility knowing how to code gives you.
Any sufficiently functional web app that isn't a simple membership area or newsletter requires at least some coding knowledge. It's certainly not a waste of time, it's an advantage. Use it.
Yes you should keep going. No code exist since WordPress, It just getting hyped this days,so don’t pay that much attention to that.
Knowing how to code is fundamental for a founder but not required.
Funny how I think the same. WOrdPress is the oldest "no code" tool out there for years and amazing how the whole "no code" thing is the new fad. Nothing against it as it enables people to come up with prototypes quickly but no serious software business can run just on "no code" tools.
The O.G. of "No Code" is Macromedia's Dreamweaver (before Adobe acquired it)...long before Webflow came into existence..and even before Wordpress.
Well then let's not forget "Microsoft Frontpage". Some kids here won't even know what that is :)
Ah your right!
Someone has to code the no-code tools. Learning to code isn't a waste of time.
Learning skills such as, programming, is applicable beyond just starting an "indiehacker"-type business. At minimum, it gives you the flexibility to add functionality that "no-code" tools don't allow for. But it also gives you the skills to find jobs for other startups or big companies ( ofc, you need to also learn fundamental data structures + algorithms ) if your IH project doesn't work out. So lots of ways to look at it, none of them make learning these skills appear a "waste"
hha
You're right. The problem is I don't want to work for big companies for a few reasons. I guess my headline is just attention grabbing and rooted in emotions since I know rationally it's not a waste.
Knowing how to code gives you a lot of flexibility. Although, it may also draw your attention away from building a business if you constantly learn but never build a real product. In your case, I'd suggest to start creating a product with low-code backend tools like firebase or supabase.
Supabase or Hasura for backends + sole serverless JS functions. You'll need to learn some SQL but that is a useful and transferable skill to have, even if low code takes over or JS gets replaced.
I don't know much about databases but I have some experience with mongoDB. I think in some tutorial I tried out firebase but I'm put off from people saying how expensive it can be if your app grows quickly.
You now have a valuable perspective that non-technical founders often wish they had (to many coding is a mystery they feel hopeless to ever understand).
I think you need to clarify what your goals are. With this post alone we can't answer this for you. The right answer depends on your goals, what brings you joy, what helps you earn money to eat, etc.
No-code tools quickly run up against limitations; things they can't do easily. On Upwork (a freelancing site) I see a decent amount of postings for people wanting developers to use or extend no-code tools for them! No-code isn't a panacea, except perhaps for the simplest projects.
Or a small company :) Or to create your own projects and understand them top-to-bottom. Or to have the technical knowledge to debug what's going wrong with no-code or low-code solutions. There are many possibilities!
"No-code tools quickly run up against limitations." 100%. I've built several prototypes with no-code to validate demand. To move beyond prototype to useable product often requires stringing together a bunch of 3rd party services and webhooks. This gets messy, expensive, and frustrating very quickly.
Would you still recommend learning about these no code tools or just developing a low feature MVP yourself? Since it sounds like if your idea is a good one, you'd have to ditch the no-code and start from scratch. While you could just build off what you made if you were coding it with app architecture already planned. And having to deal with that hooky no-code mess doesn't sound so fun so I'm not sure if the benefit is there. But I guess it depends on the project.
For someone who has zero development experience? Yes. In your case? Hell no. Continue to gain experience with a specific tech stack. You'll quickly reach a point where it's faster to spin up a project with code than no-code. This is particularly true once you have boilerplate you can reuse.
I'm currently moving away from Firebase, but I have a pretty solid NextJS + Firebase + TailwindCSS boilerplate project that I can clone and modify quickly to get to the point of a smoke screen (test)—i.e. a landing page that presents as if an actual product exists.
For the smoke screen, I don't even integrate Firebase. The forms just submit to a waitlist. Once (if) demand is validated, then I start connecting the plumbing.
Interesting. Thanks for the reply
You're really good at spinning my negative statements into a positive way. Haha. I made the topic already knowing the premise is stupid but I just really needed some help to better understand where I'm at. I'm at the place of crawling out of tutorial hell and trying to make sense of the world out there.
I'm almost always an optimist, so I hope the spin was helpful! :)
Yeah, it can be hard to make sense of the broad world out there, tech is huge.
I just want to re-emphasize the focus on figuring out what your goals are, once you've got more certainty around that, it'll help you figure out what you can ignore as well as what to pursue.
For example, if you love the satisfaction of understanding something inside and out and want to build your product that way - with the option to fallback to getting a job in programming - You can 100% ignore no-code no matter what happens to it.
If your goal is to have a product or service you're selling and you don't care how the tech works - No code makes a lot of sense, though you may need to think about how to save money to eventually hire tech people who do understand what's going on once you outgrow no-code.
From my experience: Get something you can sell done ASAP. The real journey starts after your product is ready...
Hi Bryan, I've just started learning to code over the past year as well, and with HTML, CSS, React and Nextjs too.
I too wonder if I've wasted my time with all these new no-code tools coming up! But if your primary motivation to learning to code was to work on side projects or bootstrapped businesses, I think you still have a couple of advantages:
Depends on what project you're working on, many can't be done with no code tools
I'm non - tech person who wished that I had the tech skills. So the other way round from you. You have the advantage! Don't squander it by dwelling on the sunk costs.
As a designer who starts coding last year, I feel every day that you write here. But here is something I've noticed since I've dived in coding:
I push myself further.
In all directions, making things, personal commitment, marketing, sales...
I don't know if it's related but dive into "coding" push me far away in the various topics that are related to building cool things that work.
And coding saving costs, don't need to spend €12 on web builder hosting, airtable plan, bubble app plan... Basically, just pay €3 for a domain and that it.
You definitely didn't waste your time. No-code solutions aren't really made for product creators.
But the underlying issue that I'm picking up on is that you're overdoing it with the preparation. It's probably time for you to put those coding skills to use :) Forget about learning new languages and try building something cool with the languages you already know.
When I taught myself to code 7 years ago, I didn't truly understand what I was doing until I started making things, and it made me a much better developer along the way. In other words, you can make a product, and at the same time, learn more effectively than a course can teach you.
I'm excited to for sure. Or I was was until I started learning about the current web domain and reached the state of knowing how much I don't know. It was much better being naive, because now I just have many doubts.
My main concern isn't building I actually can't wait to work on a project because it's kinda fun and lately I've been restless having nothing to work on. I think my concern is certain pressures in my life. So I'm trying to plan a strategy of achieving a modicum of success. I need to quit my current manual labor job soon, and I only need to make $1000-2000 / month working remotely to be okay. But I need to achieve that as soon as possible. Which means working on developing some SaaS idea for several months, while may be cool, is maybe not the best strategy, since they most all fail. But on the other hand, my current requirements for success are also low. So there must be some place where those two things meet. Since my view of success is considered failure for some people. But ultimately, it's time that's in my way.
If you don't mind some candid feedback, I have a few ideas for you.
First, I would recommend starting with a smaller product than a SASS app. Check out Rob Walling's classic post on the "Stair Step Approach" https://robwalling.com/2015/03/26/the-stairstep-approach-to-bootstrapping/. You said it yourself, you only need to make a few grand per month, so you don't have to build a 7-figure app on your first try. You can build something much smaller much faster to get started. I would recommend leveraging a marketplace as well to start making $ right away. For instance, launching a product on one of the App Stores, the Chrome extension/app store, or any other marketplace you can think of. I got my start selling WP themes (and I still sell them) and leveraging the theme repository enabled me to get downloads and sales immediately.
And secondly, I would try to ease off yourself with the mental pressure to quit your job. It's going to make your product journey a lot harder when you feel like it needs to work out really quickly, and you'll make better choices if you can take your time. If you're unhappy with your current job, you might want to find a new job while you continue to build your product on the side. You'll also get the benefit of multiple revenue streams until you're ready to quit.
Thanks a lot. This article really helps me. I was thinking of doing something like this and this confirms its probably a good idea.
Respectfully, you are thinking about this all the wrong way. You're trying to answer "how do I get there" before you defined where you want to go. I'd encourage you to first think of your end goal. Get really specific, down to the details. What do you want to do, where do you want to go? From there, what's missing? Why aren't you there now? What gaps exist in skills, resources, etc? How can you close those gaps?
Those answers may lead you to learning back-end coding. They may lead you to learning something completely different. That's the beauty of the journey.
Either way, no time spent learning/improving is wasted unless you allow yourself to waste your talents.
Onward!
Why would you take two years to learn to develop your business? If you have a good business idea, find a competent developer who's interested and sell them on building the idea with you.
You can’t evaluate the competency of a developer if you can’t code yourself.
If you have a competent developer you can’t tell if they are bullshitting you about task difficulty if you can’t code yourself.
You can’t do a good job prioritizing features if you can’t understand how the underlying architecture or database models make some things easy and other things hard.
Knowing how to code, whether you are making commits alongside your team or not, will save you time, money and frustration.
I didn't learn to code to build a business. I only discovered IndieHackers a couple months ago and started having this idea. I started learning to be a developer. But my current requirement is to work remotely so having a business or freelance seems the only option for a junior developer. So now I'm trying to figure out how to do that.
Been there done that. Ended up pushing myself to become a better developer after firing my CTO and it was the best decision I've made.
While I agree that taking two years to build a business is a recipe for failure, finding a competent developer who is willing to work on your idea, has a startup dev mentality, and will be a good fit for your working style is easier said than done.
The best scenario is partnering with a dev who you've already worked with, know and trust... but not everyone has those people in their network.
There's a lot of value in learning how to code. No-code is the new sexy thing, it's been around for quite a while. And no-code solutions are great. But in my opinion, they are not a full substitute for developing a solution.
No code solutions are good for solving problems you face with your already established business such as building a landing page etc. They help you save time and effort to focus on the real stuff. I don't think I've seen a single successful project that's purely no-code made that solves an actual problem.
Even if nocode was really replacing everything, knowing to code is similar to speaking a new language, the mindset you get from knowing how to code can't be replaced with anything.
While building my first project I didn't know how to code and even if there were many solutions that helped me do what I want without coding(building a newsletter business), it was really difficult and time-consuming.
After I failed, I started to learn how to code, and hopefully my current project won't end up too bad.
What you say reminds me of why I learned to code to begin with. It's kinda like the grass is always greener concept. I started out learning about affiliate marketing, dropshipping, and wordpress. And then I stopped and realized there'd be many more opportunities if I just learned to code. And I didn't want to take a risk learning something that leads nowhere.
Now after two years of learning code, it's funny that I feel the opposite way: Maybe I should learn no-code tools, or start a newsletter or whatever.
If I really analyze why this is I think it comes from insecurity and doubt.
Totally get where you're coming from. My advice to you is to start building something asap. Doesn't matter if it's no-code or yes-code (idk what to call it lol). But just try to build something and you can better see what you're missing and what you're good at.
With anything in life, I believe that waiting to be perfectly ready to finish something often leads to hesitation and lots and lots of self-doubt. Instead, try to make do with what you already have and learn the stuff you don't know on the way. Perhaps, you will realize you're already quite the coder and can tackle difficult issues that no-code can solve, perhaps not. But the only way to find out and get over your doubts is to just dive in. I don't know your back story or anything but I believe in you. Just GO!
Thanks a lot for the kind words. You're right. Once I get past this barrier I will probably feel a lot more optimistic about my potential
No-code tools are pretty limited if you want to build a SaaS solution to your liking. My suggestion is to think of a rock-solid idea (customer-needs validated) and actually try using no-code to build it. I'm sure you will realise the limitations.
Learning how to program is equal to learning English. It's a must have and anything related to it is not a waste of time at all.
90% of pure no-code projects are about how to learn no-code 😂. The real advantage of no-code is that it will help you move faster with your project that you are building from scratch.
For example we use zapier automations for our website build process based on content change on our headless CMS. But the all codebase is still there and we maintain it ourselves.
Also dont focus on no-code gurus here and on Twitter. They are making their money out of that buzz. Tbh I haven't seen a single no-code project that is not about no-code and makes decent money.
I'm afraid there is quite a bit of truth to this...it's a bit of a gold rush scenario where does handing out the shovels (courses) seem to be making the most profit.
That said, I think it only applies to using no-code for product development. When it comes to consulting or internal tooling, no-code is excellent because customer experience, efficiency or other aspects are trivial.
Teaching a small business owner to use no-code when they have no idea how to use complicated software adds great value for them, for example.
Learning to code isn't a waste of time, no code tools have existed for a long time their just receiving a lot more attention more recently. Someone has to code the no-code tools so there is always a need for a coder. I've not got any experience in no-code but I suspect they are good to get you up and running to an MVP state potentially, but overtime you may be limited with what you want to do where as coding something yourself you have complete flexibility and not having to work within the contraints of a no code tool.
Learning to code is a great skill to have. Even if you use no-code tools depending on the complexity of your projects you may find that no-code and low-code tools just won't give you the functionality and flexibility you require.
This comment was deleted 2 years ago.