What a self taught programmer learned from each of his apps

I've written a bit before about the why I taught myself to develop apps, but today I'd like to share with you the how and what I learned from each one. I taught myself entirely from home without even so much as a mentor or a prompting so I want to show you anybody can do this. It's just a matter of effort, time and learning.

I think each app has an interesting story.

So my first, very first app was a game called Polar Roller. Don't judge me I had only been developing for a couple of weeks at that point. But there's a vey important lesson I think all of you can take away from it which is don't be afraid to start. Just do it, learn what you can from youtube and any other source available and try to slap some code together that will do something close to what you want it to do. Learn why it fails, read more, get something out there and learn how you can iterate in the future. You don't start with your moonshot, change the world idea, just try making the digital equivalent of a fidget spinner and fuck around with some arrays or something else you'd like.

Don't put off doing something until tomorrow because you're afraid it won't be perfect. Especially if it's your first project.

My second was nevermissing. An app to connect family members and friends all on one GPS map! Just from having done Polar Roller before I was at least in the habit of coming up with ideas for icons. It's a complete failure of a buggy mess I was in over my head with API's, from social media to google maps, equations to account for earths curvature, attempted 3d graphics, but so much of what was written for it was improved and worked on in future projects it's worth the time spent.

With Ultragamer I learned how to listen to the market what it's demanding and to try to build solutions to their problems. Many people were having a problem with journalism in gaming so I built a solution that was a simple RSS reader to quality sites. Very simple. Still didn't have the UI thing down back then but it was something that could connect people to something they were searching for. It reminded me how important users are.

Distress Alarm is where you can see the lessons from all of those previous apps come together, a user first design to solve a real serious problem, from fentanyl and opioid overdoses to people with heart failure and other medical issues to people that might be victims of violence this is an app that has a purpose and has helped a lot of people.

I learned UI is like a joke, if you have to explain it, it's not that good it brings in and finally fixes the lessons learned from nevermissing. But sometimes simplicity s more important than simply having a ton of features. Especially with an emergency app. Nobody wants to feel they might need to call 911 due to an impending heart attack or being the victim of spousal abuse and be presented with a facebook login screen.

Somebody being chased and needs to know where a nearby police station is RIGHT NOW doesn't want an app that's slow to launch or doing anything that's not giving you that information. So that was where I spent a lot of time with UI, optimization and making everything work the same for IOS and android.

From there I went on to Chasing Cars
Toying with the idea of disruption or at least allowing users to compare different rates between lyft and uber instead of being locked into one app. I think one issue that hurt it is the app permissions have to be enabled manually to launch on some phones.

My Bible Android there is a clear evolution of what was begun with ultragamr. Except instead of gaming news it was a simple way to read the Bible. Many in my family are religious so I wanted to make something for them. For many newer apps I learned how to repurpose old code for new solutions.

Deep Sea was another game, a matching game this time but learning new things about game design, learning curves it was the type of fun, free to play, non-microtransaction ridden game for children I always wanted to make.

Travelwiki We once again see ideas from Nevermissing used. It's funny what I'd consider to be one of my biggest failures is also one of my biggest sources for future wins. That's how life is sometimes. It teaches me it's not about how you get knocked down but what you take from it when you get back up!

oko is far from my final app but a nice bookend. It doesn't look like much has changed on the surface, it's as minimalist as polar roller another game about tapping to manipulate a ball but so much changed in coding skill from Polar that barely compiles and code not even I understand to actually knowing what I was doing and some principals and practices at play. It's the 3 year improvement only I'll ever see.

You guys get the idea at this point, and like I said I have 0 hours of formal training. I just got in and got dirty and you can too! These types of lessons apply for any creative, just do it. Get out there, do it, learn something and keep striving to improve, meet people's needs, and building towards the future. Treat your first project like it's your last and your last like it's your first!