We moved from no-code prototype → coded app over the past 4 months.

What I wish I knew 2 years ago:

→ There's no shortcut to learning to build.

Any path that doesn't involve some kind of discomfort means resting on laurels and limits future capacity to build.

→ No-code is cute but you hit a ceiling pretty fast.

I started building apps with no-code. While it's been helpful, users started to ask me "add ability to upload files"! And I wanted to say, "I wish I was offering this, but my tech stack doesn't allow it". So frustrating. No-code has utility for simple apps of course but not when you complete with ChatGPT and Claude.

→ If you don't want to raise money from investors, you have to code yourself.

Bootstrapping means you're not spending someone else's money and can't throw it away or spend it like it's Xmas.

→ Learning engineering is challenging but you don't have to do this alone.

Ironically, the person who taught engineering had been sitting next to me from the beginning of my project, but I didn't want to listen to my friend. When I was open to learn engineering, he taught me.

→ Vibecoding (lovable and all the visual stuff) is a trap.

Before admitting I hard to do engineering for real, I investigated lovable, replit etc. I tought I was making progress but I had no idea of the architecture, the backend, the path to make it work. You don't want to be in this situation, especially if you hope to continuously improve your app, or will be the person to maintain it.

→ Coding with AI helps but doesn't substitute the good practices.

Coding and testing from local branch, then testing in stating, then running further checks until it's finally ready to merge to main. This requires some discipline.

→ Business continuity, disaster recovery, and good software development lifecycle is applicable from very early.

People pay you for the service to be up, so you better be prepared to disruptions, especially if you rely on APIs.

→ The small weekly adjustments compound.

Jan 26 is midmonth and it's by far our best month. This is especially because we logged every issue and fixed the most important, one by one. Not perfect now but way better!

→ You can't do everything and have to focus.

People who say you can do everything are liars. ISMS Copilot is my main project and grows because I water the plants every week, and benefits from 2.5y of having planted seeds. I have some tiny weekend projects and when I don't work on them, they don't progress. I'm now trying to delegate more, and I only add projects when I can delegate or it requires ridiculous maintenance.