What would make programming 💯% better?

Hi, I’m Brayden.

A Frontend developer and freelancer. You might know me from BuildFaster.co (HTML template-selling site). If not, then it’s good to meet you! 👋

Anywho, for the past few months, I’ve taken a break from indiehacking after dropping BuildFaster. During this break, I’ve had the time to stop, breathe, and think of new ideas. I’ve also learned new technologies like NextJS and Firebase which I can implement in future projects. 🚧

So... what’s up?

Well, when I started BuildFaster, I wanted to make money. Not gonna lie, 😅 that was my goal. I didn’t think of the beginning problem thoroughly and instead jumped right to the solution. Because of that, I didn’t get onto the path I wanted originally.

This time, it’s going to be different.

oh yeah gif

I want to actually take the time to brainstorm a problem and make a solution that I can scale, grow and audience with, and monetize.

So I’m opening this question up to all the developers.

What’s your biggest struggle as a developer? 🥵

No profession is perfect 🌈 , so there are always some cons about what you like to do.

It can be an issue that already exists, or something you struggle with.

I greatly appreciate your help. Thanks! 😄

Brayden

on January 5, 2021

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7

What’s your biggest struggle as a developer?

That there is almost never a "right answer". Nearly everything you do from choosing a framework, implementing a feature, solving a problem, or writing a single line of code. Everything comes down to best guesses, experience, weighing pros/cons, etc. For people like me with decision anxiety/analysis paralysis, that can quickly lead to freezing in your tracks and not moving forward with your project.

Maybe a solution could be something along the lines of access to input from experienced professionals, access to early alpha/beta testers, or access to peer-based code reviews.

Harrjm

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6 years ago
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  I think that’s a great idea @Harrjm! Very relevant to many developers today.
  
  Here’s another solution I thought of. What about daily/weekly questions posted about different tech stacks or technologies and ppl vote and comment on which one is their favorite?
  
  I think that makes for a pretty good stack of solutions. Which one would you most likely use?
  
  Brayden
  
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  6 years ago
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  You should check out https://stackshare.io/
  Very useful site!
  
  questionreality
  
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  6 years ago
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  I also think your solution for peer-based code reviews or pro advice is good too. This would be a paved service I assume (for the professional advice)?
  
  Brayden
  
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  6 years ago
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1. Unironically naming things 😂. The more you think about it, the harder it becomes.
2. Making implementations that are “good enough”. Its easy getting stuck in endless engineering because it’s not perfect and there’s no one stopping you from spending infinite amount of time polishing that module or api or whatever.
3. Keeping to the things you know. Easier moving fast when you don’t have to learn new tech at the same time as exploring a new domain.
4. Choosing CSS framework.
Drowzy

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6 years ago
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  Yes! Naming things is super hard.
  
  alchemist
  
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  Hey @Drowsy. Thanks for coming over :D
  
  So, you mean naming a project/product/website? Or files/components/variables?
  
  Interesting thought. Could you give me a brief example of how this happened to you as a developer?
  
  Very true. I find this very apparent in my life too. Would some type of community broke into different groups of devs who are sticking to the same technologies as you help with this struggle? That way you could keep up to date with how other developers taking similar paths as you feel about the constant evolving world of development.
  
  Super true. There are many pros and cons for each. I’d say try a few for a week each, and pick your favorite! 😄
  
  Thanks for helping me brainstorm some ideas. This is super helpful. 🙂
  Brayden
  
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  6 years ago
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    files/components/variables etc. Signaling the correct intent through naming will future you (and others) very happy. Many times I think it boils down to: “I know this concept/pattern has a name but I don’t know what it is and I don’t really know how to find out”. Imagine implementing PubSub but not knowing that it’s called PubSub how would you find out?
    
    Essentially encountering a problem for the first time, your implementation will not be the best work you can produce. However when you learn more about the problem you can produce a better solution. But if you can’t measure/determine how far off your first implementation is from the ideal solution it’s easy to get stuck in “I know it can be done better” but to do it better you have to either gain new knowledge of the problem or have someone tell you how it can be improved. This typically a thing to which code reviews can help mitigate, but if you’re working alone it can be hard to find someone to do the review.
    
    Yes! That’s a great idea. I feel like everytime I’m gonna do frontend work I have to spend time reasearching what’s going on before starting.
    
    Will do! :)
    
    Drowzy
    
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    6 years ago
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      Interesting. I think making a “best practices”/code standards document and open sourcing it would be good for this. Then people will know the best practices for naming each. Good idea, I’ll put that on my list :)
      
      I think that’s true. I’m sure there is some product by an IndieHacker where it acts as a beta feature tester and people can upvote which ones they like most. You’ll have to look more into it. Let me know what you find.
      
      That’s true. That’s defiantly one idea I’m gonna put on the list. Thanks!
      
      Best of luck! Always come back to the IH Dev forum if you need anymore advice. We’re here for you! 😄
      
      Thanks so much for these ideas @Drowsy! If I’ll let you know soon if I get some progress on one of these.
      
      Brayden
      
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      6 years ago
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        About 2. I don't really think there's any "technical solution" to this. It simply boils down to knowing what you want to solve and how you want to present it, and making the code easy to change: so basically, you get the interface of the class(es) right, and later can improve upon.
        
        About a beta feature tester with upvoting - there's plenty of solutions out there, but I don't think they solve the underlying problem (encountering a problem for the first time).
        
        CinematicStudio
        
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        Thats pretty true. @CinematicStudio. Thanks for speaking out :D
        
        Brayden
        
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Lots of people seem to find lots of struggles, or at least voice lots of struggles, in a software development career. I for one have an opposite view; It's the most fun job and hobby I've ever had, and I've now had it for around 11 years. Sure, lots of software comes with its own kinks and things, but no matter how faulty a software is, or how hard it is to use, I still like figuring those things out. I like figuring out new programming languages, new paradigms, new platforms, it's just a hella fun thing. I mean I literally build things with my fingers! How cool is that?

In fact, the love of figuring things out is precisely why software development is such a good fit for me. I can't imagine how people who don't like solving problems would ever do this job happily. But I do, every damn day.

askonomm

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6 years ago
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  Love it Asko, that’s pretty true for me to. That’s why I wanted to do this post. I love coding, but helping to solve problems that other people have would be super cool.
  
  Brayden
  
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Solving any of these issues:
- Companies you rely on going out of business
- Government regulations being introduced forcing you to re-architect your entire app
- A support person mis-reads your email, gets offended and then weird stuff just starts happening in your account for several weeks/months
- Software you rely on starts to eat up all your CPU, support keeps telling you to upgrade, so you do, but the problem just gets worse
- Changing software you rely on mid way through a project and having to relearn the UI and all the shortcuts
- A/B Testing will be the end of us all
Self-hosting starts to get more and more attractive as some of these sorts of things happen to you.
mjgs

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6 years ago
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  Hey Mark,
  
  Thanks for sharing out.
  
  Companies you rely on going out of business
  
  Do you mean making a service or platform to help vital companies stay alive and “make a comeback”?
  
  Government regulations being introduced forcing you to re-architect your entire app
  
  I think I understand what you mean. Maybe some type of community dedicated to helping with these problems? It’s a very important issue becoming more apparent. What type of solutions have you had in mind for this?
  
  A support person mis-reads your email, gets offended and then weird stuff just starts happening in your account for several weeks/months
  
  That’s interesting, not sure if there is a proper solution other than a tool that reminds you/or them to re-read the email. What do you think? I don’t encounter this much often so I probably wouldn’t be the best person to take action on it.
  
  Software you rely on starts to eat up all your CPU, support keeps telling you to upgrade, so you do, but the problem just gets worse
  
  Good point. What are some examples of this in your workspace? For example for mine, I use VScode a lot, which takes some memory and CPU, but I just discovered how useful Vim can be and it has a much less need for power. See where I’m going? I’d suggest finding some lower-power alternatives if possible. Thanks for giving me another nice idea to put on my list ;D
  
  Changing software you rely on mid way through a project and having to relearn the UI and all the shortcuts
  
  Another good point. Do you have an example of this happening? I think its a very valid point and is an issue for many developers. Thanks for sharing!
  
  AB testing will be the all of us.
  
  Hmm, I havent dived into AB testing too much but am somewhat familiar with it. Do you mean it will make developers obsolete? Or is it just a dumb idea all together?
  
  Thanks Mark for sparking some ideas into my mind. This is super helpful and I greatly appreciate your help.
  
  Brayden
  
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  6 years ago
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Dev environment setup, production environment provisioning, production logging, deployment, testing.

The list could go on and on but I think many issues about programming are not due to the act of programming itself.

omneity

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6 years ago
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  That’s very true. Thanks for being the first to say those 😉
  
  I’ll add those to my list. Thanks for sharing!
  
  Brayden
  
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My biggest struggle has been keeping up with new technologies that are made and also I sometimes find doing certain CSS animations to be difficult.

JoshTernyak

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6 years ago
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  Interesting.
  
  Would some type of personalized roadmap tool help? Or a community dedicated to those things? What would make keeping up to date with those frameworks easier?
  
  Also, have you tried something like Animista or Anime.JS
  
  Brayden
  
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  6 years ago
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    Possibly. I'm not sure. I think having someone to help keep you focused is valuable.
    
    No I haven't yet tried those animation libraries, but I will for future projects. Thanks!
    
    JoshTernyak
    
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      Sounds good, let me know how it goes. I can definitely give you a few more ;)
      
      Brayden
      
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Finding the right path to take as a Dev in 2021. I’m sure there are many people just starting out and they need a guide with everything they need to do to start out.

Any resources already out there that can help?

anthony_2

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6 years ago
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  Hey @anthony_2!
  
  Have you checked out roadmap.sh? It’s pretty helpful. It contains complete roadmaps for Frontend, Backend, Devops, and more.
  
  I suggest you check it out.
  
  Brayden
  
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  6 years ago
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    That’s a great resource. Thanks for sharing, @BraydenTW!
    
    Wyeem
    
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    6 years ago
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      You’re welcome :D
      
      Brayden
      
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Hey,

If you build a tool thinking on behalf of me would be great. Let's say - I put in a problem, and the tool uses its own AI to solve that problem. Enough will be when the tool will return a meta description of the algorithm to solve the problem, so that I can give the meta description/instruction to any developer or even any other processor.

Andrzej,
https://pagemtr.com

itma

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6 years ago
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  That’s pretty interesting. I, personally, don’t have any experience with AI but I think it’s pretty cool. Maybe I could try making a simplified version for fun, and then evolve it into something real-world applicable.
  
  Thanks for sharing! This is pretty useful :)
  
  Brayden
  
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  6 years ago
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