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Do you reinvent things because you can? :)

Kabir
3 replies
The power of code is so great in this day and age. I wrote code in my teen years to my 30s and then switched to team management and less and less code. Two years ago, I wouldn't venture into building something from scratch as front-end/back-end are two different worlds, and I live in the back-end world. Now, with powerful AI code assistants, I can whip up a new cloud computing instance, throw Tailwind, and have ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini figure out the little clumsy details of making the front end look tolerable. So, I find myself tempted to reinvent things that do not work well for me. For example, I just started reinventing a mailing list tool :) What do you do?

Replies

Trey Winterbourne
I often do the same! I'm still a teen, but I love building existing products from scratch for fun, but make it custom tailored to me. This gives me a nice result, and gives some fun building experiences :) I've started thinking about the possibilities making these projects suitable for more than just me though, but some of them are broad and I know I'll struggle to market. But it's a journey I'm willing to attempt. I'd love to hear more about the mailing list tool you've started to make, will it be a Saas product or even open source, or just for yourself? Great thoughts though, it's amazing how much help we can now get from robots in software lol
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Kabir
@treyww - you are doing great at such a young age! Awesome job! I wrote my first 2D CAD-like application on a computer with 128KB RAM as an 8th grader and my first commercial software (shareware) when I was 2nd a college student. I wrote my first professional software when I was in my first job, which was also my last job, as I learned the value of my time. They were paying me $48K/yr in 1995, and I produced a $15K/lic software for them :). Needless to say, I have never worked for anyone since then and have written a dozen books on Linux, Web programming, and have been running my 3rd software company for 23 years :) I will open-source it and offer a SaaS version for minimal fees. I wrote this on the site to deal with some real-life group emails about trips that we are planning to take in the next 12 months.
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Trey Winterbourne
@shownotes thanks! Dang, that's an insane journey. Good job on the license that you sold to them at your job - impressive! Have you found any downsides of being on your own rather than in a job - such as an unstable wage or any struggles like that, and how did you overcome them? I'd love to do the same, hoping do similar things on the side. 23 years is amazing, that's nice that you're still running it and haven't sold it off to anyone, I hope it's doing well! Keep it up man, you're doing insane :)
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