Launching RootBuilds

Hi everyone,

A few days ago I launched rootbuilds.com. I have started and failed many personal projects before (and a long time lurker on indie hackers), this is the first project that I actually shipped to public. So I am pretty nervous but definitely excited :)

RootBuilds is where you will learn how to build hard things (think databases, compilers, game engines, and alike) from first principles. The motivation for this project has been in my head for a long time: I am deeply unsatisfied with most online learning resources. They are often too superficial, too visually noisy, and frankly many just low quality. I want something that is crisp, actually shows you how to do hard things, and is just a delight to work through: no cookies (therefore no stupid consent banners!), fast page load, exercises that run in browser, etc.

Eventually, the ambition is I want to develop full content for these topics. I am fully aware that each of these topics would easily take me a year if not more to build and polish, therefore to make sure I break the "never ship" cycle, I decided to start with something less daunting: write about how to build a web app. It may sound laughably simple at first, but it's actually a lot of work to explain React and CSS well. It took me 80 hours to build the current site, including 20+ hours alone polishing the CSS section. And I do think I have created something of value, and I hope you would agree too.

If this idea of learning how to build hard things from fundamentals appeal to you, please subscribe for future updates (there is a button on the home page, or directly on https://forms.gle/ynxJXkpcfLGebBfm7). I am currently working on the next (much bigger and more ambitious) topic and I hope to share more updates in a few months time.

Thanks!