Introduce yourself
Say hello to the Product Hunt community
Start new thread

From civil engineering to Software developer

by•

Hi everyone!

I'm a developer from Portugal. After 10 years working in civil engineering, I decided to make the leap into software development.

It's been a challenging but rewarding journey, and I've just reached a milestone I'm proud of: I built a social network that's now live in production. It's a small, privacy-focused project, and I learned a huge amount building it on my own.

Excited to be part of this community and to learn from everyone here. Happy to connect with other career-changers or anyone building solo!

122 views

Add a comment

Replies

Best

Congrats Lloyd, shipping to production solo is the part most people never reach. Civil engineering to software is a serious leap.

Different lane, same jump here. Marketing background, just got my first app live on the App Store with AI doing the heavy lifting on the code. The building stopped being the scary part. The "will anyone actually use it" part is the new mountain.

What pushed you toward privacy-focused for the social network? Feels like a deliberate stance, not a default.

 Thanks! And congrats on shipping your first app. The App Store is no joke.

You nailed it, it was deliberate. Back in 2019 I watched The Great Hack and it really shifted how I saw social media. I stopped posting photos online completely after that. The whole model felt manipulative. Your data, your attention, all monetized, with strangers and algorithms deciding what you see.

So when I built MyNook, privacy wasn't a feature I added later, it was the starting point. No algorithms, no strangers, no popularity metrics. Just the people you actually know. The "will anyone use it" mountain is exactly where I am too, so let me know if you find the path up 😄

welcome Lloyd! 10 years in civil engineering and then making the leap to software development takes a lot of courage. the fact that you already have a social network live in production says everything about how far you've come. would love to connect with more solo builders here 👋

Thank you! , that really means a lot! It's been a challenging but rewarding journey. Honestly, building something real and seeing it live made all the late nights worth it. Would love to connect too, always curious to see what people here are building.

Wow Lloyd, civil engineering to software development — that's not just a career switch, that's a complete mindset shift! 💪

And the fact that you already have a social network live in production after making that leap? That's seriously impressive. Most people take years just to build their first side project.

I'm also building in public working on , a suite of free AI tools. The solo builder struggle is real, but so is the satisfaction when something actually ships

Would love to connect always great to meet fellow builders who aren't afraid to start from scratch. Keep going

 Thank you, that's really kind! The mindset shift was the hardest part — engineering taught me to plan everything upfront, and software taught me to embrace breaking things and rebuilding. KuberAgent sounds great, free AI tools are exactly the kind of thing people need right now. Building in public is something I want to get better at too

civil engineering to a shipped privacy-first social network is honestly the strongest credential story i have read this week. you did not just career-change. you shipped a structurally private product, which is the rarest combination in software. one structural note for mynook. privacy on the consumption side is well-understood (no algorithm, no strangers). the harder problem is on the publishing side, where users publish a post and want to retract its visibility without breaking context for the people who already read it. if you nail the publish-and-retract primitive, you have a moat. happy to dig in. we are working on a similar publish-and-retract receipt format on tam network.

 Thanks for the feedback, that's a genuinely interesting and different angle! For now, though, I'm not adding new features to MyNook, the priority at this stage is getting people to actually test and use it, and seeing whether the core idea resonates. The publish-and-retract problem is a tricky one (you can't really un-see something once it's out), but it's something I'll keep in mind. If you'd like to take MyNook for a spin, I'd genuinely value your feedback on what's already there 🙂

  absolutely right call. core idea validation before features always wins. i will sign up for mynook tonight and DM you feedback within the week. and you nailed the cannot un-see constraint, that is why most retraction patterns are bad UX. the closest viable primitive is probably context-update not retract (where the original stays but gets a visible amendment). would love to compare notes after you have run a few cohorts.

 Appreciate that! And "context-update not retract" is a much sharper way to frame it, keeping the original with a visible amendment makes way more sense than pretending it never existed. Definitely keen to compare notes once I've got some real usage data. Looking forward to your feedback once you've had a look around!

This feels very relatable. Shipping the product is one mountain, but “will anyone actually use it?” is a completely different one.The core idea seems to be: can people share more comfortably when visibility is based on real relationships — Family, Friends, or Both — instead of algorithms, strangers, or public metrics.

So I’d probably avoid testing MyNook with random users first.

The smallest useful test might be 5 real private circles:

  1. one small family group;

  2. one close friend group;

  3. one parent / child photo-sharing case;

  4. one long-distance family case;

  5. one group of people who already stopped posting publicly.

For each circle, I’d watch whether they complete the full loop:

  • one person invites 2–3 real people;

  • they classify each person as Family / Friend / Both;

  • someone posts something real, not a test post;

  • another person comments or reacts;

  • at least one person comes back

If people only say “I like the privacy idea,” that’s weak.

If a small circle actually posts, reacts, and comes back, that’s much stronger evidence that MyNook is not just a good privacy concept, but a real social behavior.

Hey Lloyd. welcome to tech.

I think here it's all about how you can build things no tutorials work only if the product works then things work.

btw my intro: I'm Divv (just graduated with AIML engineering) but so far build few iOS apps that are live on app store so far got two paying customers.

HI Lloyd, Good on you! You're actually shipping!
I am also shifting my career a bit. I was a Digital Marketing Director for like 15 years but now with AI assistance it is possible to build all those "wouldn't it be nice" apps. Most are based out of my main site but the sky is the limit. Hoping to do my first launch this weekend.

career-changer respect — civil engineering to shipping a live social network solo is no small jump. since you went privacy-focused by choice, what did that actually mean in practice: local-only storage, no third-party analytics, something else? we went a similar route (nothing leaves the phone) and the tradeoffs weren't what I expected going in.