I work in digital marketing.
My background is social media marketing, content, paid ads, campaigns, reports, client servicing, and all those kinds of things.
Not software engineering.
Not computer science.
Nothing technical like that.
But somewhere around early 2025, I seriously started building small apps after work.
Though honestly, the seed was planted much earlier, around 2019-2020.
Back then, I was already fascinated by the idea of building apps and software. I remember seeing indie hackers and developers online and thinking, “Damn. It must feel good to build your own thing.” At that time, it still felt very far away from me.
Starting from zero
When I first started, I did not even know what Git actually was.
VS Code looked intimidating.
Terminal looked scary, like I was about to accidentally break my computer with one wrong command.
Even deploying a simple app felt complicated.
I literally had to Google the terms “deploy” and “debug.”
I remember feeling amazed seeing people casually talk about APIs, databases, VPS, React, Docker, and all these technical terms online. Meanwhile I was just trying to make a simple productivity app work properly without breaking it. But I was curious.
I think part of it came from frustration too. At work, sometimes I kept repeating the same process over and over again. Sometimes I had ideas for small tools that I wished existed. Sometimes I just wanted simpler tools for my own workflow.
What I started building
So I started experimenting. Mostly after work. Usually late at night. Sometimes early in the morning before work while everybody else was still asleep.
I began with tiny projects:
- pomodoro timer
- chrome extensions
- task board apps
- AI writing tools
- simple dashboards
- little web apps for my own workflow
Honestly, I probably have 30+ ideas and half-finished apps by now.
Most of them were messy. Some apps broke halfway. Many projects got abandoned. I also realized some ideas were clearly too ambitious for my current skill level and budget. Budget constraints hit me quite hard too.
There were moments when I spent three hours debugging only to realize I missed one stupid comma somewhere. There were also times I paused for two days, questioning whether I should continue or just move on.
Learning by building
But slowly, I learned. Mainly thanks to AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Hermes Agent, and others.
I did not really learn through courses. I learned by building things.
Build something.
Break something.
Get frustrated.
Google something.
Ask AI.
Fix something.
Repeat again.
Funny enough, coding itself was not the hardest part. The hardest part was managing life around it.
Finding energy after work. Protecting sleep. Avoiding burnout mentally. Balancing family responsibilities. And trying not to get distracted by too many ideas at once.
Some nights I wanted badly to keep coding.
But my body was already too tired.
That was something I had to learn the hard way.
The part that made it real
Still, the small wins felt really meaningful.
The first time my Chrome extension got approved on the Chrome Store, I felt genuinely happy. Finally, I had created something I used to dream about back in 2019-2020.
Then one day I checked the stats. Turns out strangers somewhere in the world had actually installed and used it.
Not thousands of users.
Not viral.
Nothing crazy.
But enough to make me pause and smile for a while.
Because somehow, something I built after work on random nights became useful to another human being somewhere else in the world.
That feeling was hard to explain. I remember feeling excited and telling my wife about it.
I’m just a guy who got curious and started building tiny apps after work. Still learning. Still shipping. One small project at a time.