I recently found my old iPhone 5 from around 2015. It still had a bunch of apps I’d started building but never finished. None of them even open anymore, but I remember exactly what they were meant to do some small games, a few utility apps, all ideas I genuinely believed in at the time. Between 2015 and 2017, life got a bit messy. College took over, and the motivation to keep building slowly faded. There were features I wanted to implement but just didn’t have the technical ability to pull off. Eventually, I stopped altogether. Looking back, it wasn’t just a lack of skill - it was timing. Fast forward 11 years, I decided to revisit that version of myself. I downloaded Xcode again and started learning Swift. Surprisingly, it felt far more approachable than Objective-C ever did. One of the apps I had back then was called Bindr - a collaborative punch list app where others could contribute in real time. Even back then, I believed note-taking should move beyond pen and paper, and that apps should be smart enough to generate notes automatically from images. I just didn’t have the bandwidth or experience to make that real. At the time, I was learning from YouTube tutorials, copying and pasting code, trying to piece things together. Six months later, after diving back into development for the first time in over a decade, I can finally say: I finished it. This is an over simplified journey, but it was fun to build again. I'm actually working in Engineering now, and co-incidently I undertake site visits all the time and use this just becuase it saves me from bringing a clipboard. My co-workers think im some kind of genius but to me it was a hobby turned into my day to day. Who would have thought and idea i had in college turned out to be a real work application. The app is now called SnapThat (which, admittedly, sounds a lot less like a dating app). It’s been approved by Apple, and for me, that’s proof that you don’t have to be the best developer to ship something in 2026 - you just have to stick with it. Ideas aren’t bad; sometimes the timing just is. And timing matters more than we think. Finding that old phone might’ve been coincidence, but it led me here. As a solo developer, I’ve exceeded my own expectations. Going from almost nothing to something I’m genuinely proud of - it’s been a rewarding process. If the app helps even a few people or makes their day-to-day easier, that’s enough for me. Even after all this time, I still haven’t seen many apps quite like it. SnapThat uses AI and image recognition to automatically generate what most people dread doing on site.. It can suggest recommendations, identify risks, and tag locations - almost like having a professional in your pocket. You can also collaborate with others in real time, something I never imagined I’d be able to build back then.

SnapThat: Audit like a Pro

Point and Snap, let the AI inspect for you.

Point and Snap, let the AI inspect for you.