From civil engineering to Software developer
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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!
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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.
@mohamed_afrideen 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!@tina_chhabra , 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 KuberAgent.com, 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
@deepu_jee 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.
@thenameisarian 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 🙂
@lloyd_costa 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.
@thenameisarian 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!
Reading that privacy was the starting point and not a feature you bolted on later, that tells me you built something you actually believe in. The "will anyone use it" part is the same wall I keep hitting as a solo founder. The thing slowly working for me: not chasing "users" in the abstract, but getting the handful of people I built it for to actually use it and tell me the unfiltered truth. With MyNook being about people you already know, that first cohort might literally be sitting in your contacts. How are you approaching those first invites?