Building things end-to-end - frontend, backend, and analytics - using Python, JavaScript, and a lot of curiosity. Sharing thoughts on data, design, code quality, and the real stories behind shipping products. Always up for idea swaps, tech chats, or new challenges! 📬 DMs open for collabs, questions, and geeky rants!

One year smoke-free today. Feels unreal. In that year I've built a quit smoking app, I breathe so much better, I run, I stopped coughing every single morning... And lots more. I remember vividly the day I quit. I was about to go away on a weekend trip. I have spent a couple of weeks cutting down and I felt the urge to start back up - instead I left for my trip without my pack. And I never smoked again. Surely, the first days and weeks were hell. First it was the nicotine withdrawals, and then the habit started to fight. But then, somehow, it stopped becoming difficult to resist. It didn't go away immediately. But it wasn't hard to fight it anymore. And now, it's almost like it was never a habit. Definitely one of the better choices I've made.

Transitioning from basic to advanced Apple search ads and I regret not doing ASO earlier! Targeting specific keywords can be a painful procedure which… is essentially ASO. And without Astro you’re going in blind. Biggest example is that the Greek store… actually indexes English keywords the most in the quit smoking niche, so my Greek translation wasn’t doing anything 🫠 Slow & steady wins the race, amirite?

What is this trend to hype releases just from leaked images and declaring the next AI winners and losers... Before even testing the damn model 😡 We are constantly getting less and less from the same sub, but even if we ignore that... How often have we seen different performance on day 5 compared to release day? A bit less hype wouldn't hurt anyone 🫠

Did a giveaway of free lifetime codes in Reddit. Got about 200 installs overnight. Lots of them didn't even start the onboarding - just redeemed the freebie. Got a few genuine users though, and I'm collecting already some feedback. Hopefully I'll get a few more of it in the coming days. A lot of the "bad actors" are from Vietnam. Ngl I imagine them a little bit like the guy from Silicon Valley

There is this dude that has created an account three times, pressing SOS once and then deleting their account. First one was live for 10 days, then the other two were deleted almost immediately on creation. No errors as far as I can tell or issues 🫣 Users do really try all the paths available to them

There is this dude that has created an account three times, pressing SOS once and then deleting their account. First one was live for 10 days, then the other two were deleted almost immediately on creation. No errors as far as I can tell or issues 🫣 Users do really try all the paths available to them

New website is not only looking sweet... but maybe... just maybe... I can start converting some of this SEO traffic (chart is showing store clicks from my web page)

I consider myself a smart person. Yet, I almost fell victim to a very, very elaborate phishing attempt tonight. Once I realized something was off, I started documenting stuff. Will do a full writeup tomorrow. In the meantime, if @hanj1ang reaches out to you with an offer that’s too good to refuse? Abort mission. Stay safe.

Been a long time away from the camera again and my “uhms” are getting worse 🫠 Tldr; growth is slow. Targeting us is expensive and using the advanced mode in Apple search ads takes some time to pick up

I've switched my apple search ads targeting to US, but using Basic mode for it is completely unusable. I get approximately 50% from downloading to onboarded (just removed auth screen so that should improve), and I've made back 23$. I've got 2 more monthly trials to go too, but that won't put a dent to it. It was good while it lasted, but will try my hand on the Advanced mode 🤓

Positive news: I've likely got a medical reviewer for my app and website Negative news: Website is so damn outdated that needs pretty much a full rebuild consequences!

To the people that are saying "I'm cancelling, going to Claude now it didn't regress"... They all do. All the time. Opus had the same issue in literally every version for example 🫠

Should be used in anger management classes 😡

This is so true and I don't run it as often as I should! I was using superpowers in Claude for the longest of time, and while it felt essential a few months ago (sonnet 4.5 era), at the moment is just bloat. I recently deleted it and my 20$ plan seems to be going twice as hard without losing any performance. At least when it doesn't speak like a lobotomised corporate PM

It has been a blast using Makiroll the past couple weeks! Can't wait to try it out on the web too - should be a blast! If you're shy on camera and struggle with ehm, uhms, ahhhs and seeing your face just like me.... This is the solution. Proof is my feed 😅

It’s been a few days! Work got really busy, really fast. At the same time X algo hasn’t been the most enjoyable to interact with lately - in between billing errors and dopamine hits, the grind can get a bit tough. But these videos are so easy to make, it would be a shame if I went off the grid 😅

It sounds simple. It isn't. There is way too much competition. The apps that are printing are in it for the long run. And as someone in the quit smoking niche, the apps I'm up against are backed by WHO and the NHS (kwit, SmokeFree). Maybe I'm not doing distribution right. Maybe I'm a negative Sally. These don't help though 😅 I KNOW my day is just around the corner.

17! Sent out 17 emails to stop smoking services across the UK and now we wait ⏳ Did most of the research with Grok bot. Super slow, but got the job done...🤷‍♂️ PS: Gotta love an old fashioned spreadsheet

Week 45 I’ll be stopping posting stats for a while. And I’ll be sharing insights from my journey. I ended up a bit shy from August’s goal but I’ve learned that: - short onboarding ain’t the trick❌ - long onboarding ain’t the trick❌ Short screens are ✅ A screen that is trying to be too smart will cause drop offs. Split it into more smaller screens and you’re fine. It’s not that longer onboarding works. It’s that this method avoids information overload and doesn’t put burden to the user. Or so I suppose 🤔 September here we go!

I think I ought to do more than 10 this week if getting prospects is _that_ easy! After all, cold email reply rate is super low. Work will be in getting the reps in 💪