Marketer Learning to Code: My First App (AI Copywriting) Is Online!
I'm feeling half shy, half proud. It's actually LIVE on a URL:
Frankly, I almost can't believe it. I never considered myself to be the coding type as I prefer not to get into the deep details. But somehow I managed to push through.
As a marketer, I never really understood why indiehackers felt unable to promote their products, but I really get it now. There's a sense of pride of something you made that makes you feel extra vulnerable sharing it with a group who could so easily tear you down and tell you it's worthless, or a total waste of time. I can feel myself hesitating about it now, even as I'm sharing this update.
Let's how I go about finishing this off and promoting it.
What I did:
Took the Foundations & 24 Hr MVP course at https://www.founderhacker.com/ by Ryan Kulp
Tried to finish the Foundations at least. Managed to get through everything except the object oriented programming and API sections. Ironically I guess they're the most important...
To build the app, I followed along the 24-hr MVP course but just did the tasks for Growl rather than the demo apps Ryan creates in the course.
I used Cursor to help prompt my way through learning things I didn't know how to do or understand.
Talked to my friend Alex for advice on security, etc.
Signed up with Heroku and deployed.
What I learned:
So much of coding seems to involve Googling the answer? I thought people knew how to code without looking up docs or answers etc! But totally not the case, haha.
Same with using the terminal? I had no idea that it would be used so much, just to check everything along the way or enter in data, etc.
Taking shortcuts with code libraries and off-the-shelf solutions seems to be a good way to go, vs building everything from scratch. I didn't know this was a common practice.
Learning with AI has meant I get the 'gist' of everything but don't feel confident about the finer details of the work. Maybe it comes with time. I can write some basic stuff by hand myself but for the more complicated functions and logic, I need a lot of help from AI to guide me.
Things to do from here:
Got a few things to fix on the website, like fixing the login flow for non-users. And also making sure it works & is responsive on mobile.
Gotta implement some kind of analytics solution, too. D'oh.
I'm looking forward to working on some UI design to improve the look and feel. I have a friend helping me with this, so hopefully it turns out really distinctive as I know there are a tonne of AI tools out there.
I'll need to start promoting it somehow to see if there's any commercial interest
If you end up trying it, feel free to let me know what you think - here or on Twitter!
That's amazing bro keep going what is the tech stack you learn
thanks mate!
Ruby on Rails, JS, HTML, Tailwind
are you a programmer?
No i just started to learn how to code
Ah no worries. Me too. I took the Foundations course from https://www.founderhacker.com/ then followed the 24-hr MVP course to build this.
Thanks bro 😍👍
Hey Benjamin, congrats on getting GrowlCopywriter live! I can totally relate to how you feel — it’s a huge accomplishment, and putting something out there for the first time always brings that mix of pride and vulnerability.
It’s awesome that you pushed through the coding challenges and applied what you learned so quickly. I’m sure the next steps (like UI improvements and promotion) will be just as rewarding.
I completely agree with your point about AI – it’s like having a coding mentor at your fingertips, but the real confidence comes with getting your hands dirty with the details over time.
Looking forward to seeing how it evolves! I’ll definitely check it out and share my thoughts once I do.
Keep going, you’re doing great!
Thanks Ravij! Are you working on a similar project too? I'm keen to see what you're working on as well.
You don't have contact info
True. Thought nobody would go to those foot links for the first few days. I'll fix that
Done. Added the terms and privacy pages + contact method. Thanks for the accountability, Ben.
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