How some smart technology choices helped me build and launch a fairly complex app in under a month.
I'm a front-end engineer who loves building side-projects. My latest - NightCafe Creator - is an AI Art Generator. I just posted an article to Medium about the technology choices I made while building it, why I made them, and how they helped me launch the app a lot faster than I otherwise would have been able to.
The choices were no mistake, they were the product of some guiding principles:
- No premature optimisation
- Choose the technologies that will be fastest to work with
- Build once for as many platforms as possible
- Play to my own strengths
- Absolute MVP — do the bare minimum to get each feature ready for launch ASAP
The reasoning behind the first four principles can be summarised by the last one. The last principle — Absolute MVP — is derived from the lean startup principle of getting feedback as early as possible. It’s important to get feedback ASAP so you can learn whether you’re on the right track, you don’t waste time building the wrong features (features nobody wants), and you can start measuring your impact. I’ve also found it important for side-projects in particular, because they are so often abandoned before being released, but long after an MVP launch could have been done.
Read about the actual technology choices I made on Medium - https://medium.com/@angus.russell89/anatomy-of-an-ai-art-generator-app-13259e438ce5
Follow NightCafe on Indie Hackers - https://www.indiehackers.com/product/nightcafe-creator
