This weekend I spent about 14 hours, 1 Billion token (yes that is billion with a B), and a lot of brainpower on a few projects.
AI-assisted coding (assisted is a joke, it literally writes everything now) is crazy. I accomplished SO MUCH. Right?
And yet at 10:33 PM on Sunday night before my work week begins, I'm not thinking about the projects at all.
It's easier than ever to vibecode something in a weekend. To build almost anything you can think of like THAT.
But my brain is instead focused on the fact that in that time, and with those tokens, it was almost too easy to get to this point:
> I made a near-fully functioning iOS app in ~6 hours
> made a macOS app in ~4 hours
> AND spun up a marketing site for both of them in 30 mins
It's WILD to think about how much I just created in such little time.
Even just 3 years ago, doing that amount of work would've taken me 4, maybe 5 times as long. To write all that code by hand. To learn the frameworks. Debug the sh*t code that
I wrote. But at the end of the day, make a ton of progress.
And now, as I sit at my keyboard, reflecting on what I just built, I can't shake the feeling that I am getting nowhere faster than ever before.
I've built over 30 different projects over the past decade. I've listed a handful of them on my personal site.
But they never made any money, or got much attention. I was enjoying building them because it was hard. Or rather, it took time and debugging and reading documentation to build something that worked.
It felt like I was making progress!
But NOW, because of AI coding capabilities, I am able to realize much quicker how much I suck at marketing. At distribution. At getting people to give a shit about the things I build.
Because now I can spin something up in less than a day. Which means I should have plenty of time to go figure out how to get someone to care. To pay money for the thing I built. The thing that should solve a problem they have.
The skillset of marketing, selling, and distribution - it's one of the last things I feel I need to figure out to get this whole "indie-hacker," "be-your-own-boss" thing down.
I often feel like the miner who turned away just before he reached the diamonds. I've taken so many swings, and have had so many misses, but I gotta be close, right?
So close yet so far buddy :,)
I don't want to give up. I know that I can do it. I just don't know how, but I know that I can do it.
I'm not pulled to go do marketing in the same way that I'm pulled to go build.
The idea of creating something when just before there was nothing, is so exciting to me. It's what led me to fall in love with programming in the first place 15 years ago.
But I know that if I don't figure out the marketing and distribution side of these projects, then none of it works.
And the frustrating part is, I don't feel totally in the dark here of what I need to do.
I follow a lot of people on X and YouTube who have "figured out" distribution.
Sure, maybe some of them have gotten lucky (luck is always a part of the equation if we're being honest). But at the end of the day, there is a series of steps you can take that will at the very least help you figure out if what you built/are building is of any interest to anyone at all or not.
I feel like I know what I need to do. Or at least I have ideas on where I should start?
I think I also am partially scared of failure. It would suck for things to not work out if I tried them. I am pretty good at most things I do (light flex), but this just doesn't feel like one of them right now. I don't want to be complacent and just work a 9-5 for the next 30 years.
So. With that said.
I'll probably keep building tomorrow. And next weekend. And next month.
I know that I can do this. I'm gonna keep taking swings. It's only a matter of time until I make contact.
jack_lynch•1h ago
AI-assisted coding (assisted is a joke, it literally writes everything now) is crazy. I accomplished SO MUCH. Right?
And yet at 10:33 PM on Sunday night before my work week begins, I'm not thinking about the projects at all.
It's easier than ever to vibecode something in a weekend. To build almost anything you can think of like THAT.
But my brain is instead focused on the fact that in that time, and with those tokens, it was almost too easy to get to this point:
> I made a near-fully functioning iOS app in ~6 hours > made a macOS app in ~4 hours > AND spun up a marketing site for both of them in 30 mins
It's WILD to think about how much I just created in such little time.
Even just 3 years ago, doing that amount of work would've taken me 4, maybe 5 times as long. To write all that code by hand. To learn the frameworks. Debug the sh*t code that
I wrote. But at the end of the day, make a ton of progress.
And now, as I sit at my keyboard, reflecting on what I just built, I can't shake the feeling that I am getting nowhere faster than ever before.
I've built over 30 different projects over the past decade. I've listed a handful of them on my personal site.
But they never made any money, or got much attention. I was enjoying building them because it was hard. Or rather, it took time and debugging and reading documentation to build something that worked.
It felt like I was making progress!
But NOW, because of AI coding capabilities, I am able to realize much quicker how much I suck at marketing. At distribution. At getting people to give a shit about the things I build.
Because now I can spin something up in less than a day. Which means I should have plenty of time to go figure out how to get someone to care. To pay money for the thing I built. The thing that should solve a problem they have.
The skillset of marketing, selling, and distribution - it's one of the last things I feel I need to figure out to get this whole "indie-hacker," "be-your-own-boss" thing down.
I often feel like the miner who turned away just before he reached the diamonds. I've taken so many swings, and have had so many misses, but I gotta be close, right?
So close yet so far buddy :,)
I don't want to give up. I know that I can do it. I just don't know how, but I know that I can do it.
I'm not pulled to go do marketing in the same way that I'm pulled to go build.
The idea of creating something when just before there was nothing, is so exciting to me. It's what led me to fall in love with programming in the first place 15 years ago.
But I know that if I don't figure out the marketing and distribution side of these projects, then none of it works.
And the frustrating part is, I don't feel totally in the dark here of what I need to do.
I follow a lot of people on X and YouTube who have "figured out" distribution.
Sure, maybe some of them have gotten lucky (luck is always a part of the equation if we're being honest). But at the end of the day, there is a series of steps you can take that will at the very least help you figure out if what you built/are building is of any interest to anyone at all or not.
I feel like I know what I need to do. Or at least I have ideas on where I should start?
I think I also am partially scared of failure. It would suck for things to not work out if I tried them. I am pretty good at most things I do (light flex), but this just doesn't feel like one of them right now. I don't want to be complacent and just work a 9-5 for the next 30 years.
So. With that said.
I'll probably keep building tomorrow. And next weekend. And next month.
I know that I can do this. I'm gonna keep taking swings. It's only a matter of time until I make contact.