[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":180},["ShallowReactive",2],{"blog-post:\u002Fblog\u002Fyou-dont-need-another-app":3},{"post":4,"series":173,"translation":179},{"id":5,"title":6,"author":7,"body":8,"date":155,"description":156,"draft":157,"extension":158,"image":159,"imageAlt":159,"meta":160,"navigation":161,"path":162,"readingTime":163,"seo":164,"series":165,"seriesPart":166,"stem":167,"tags":168,"updated":159,"__hash__":172},"blog_en\u002Fblog\u002Fyou-dont-need-another-app.md","You don't need to build another app","Cess White",{"type":9,"value":10,"toc":146},"minimark",[11,15,18,21,27,30,33,38,41,44,47,50,53,57,60,63,66,69,72,75,78,81,84,87,91,94,97,100,103,106,110,113,116,119,127,130,134,137,140,143],[12,13,14],"p",{},"Lately some older relatives of mine, retired and nowhere near software development, keep asking me whether it's really that easy to build apps now.",[12,16,17],{},"They've read about people who build their own tools, change how their TVs work, or make apps to watch the cameras in their house. They can't believe anyone does that without years of studying programming.",[12,19,20],{},"I tell them yes. Then I ask them something else, because that conversation is almost always better than the original question:",[12,22,23],{},[24,25,26],"strong",{},"What do you want to do?",[12,28,29],{},"Some want to understand how a technology works. Some have a very specific problem. Some just want to see how far they can get.",[12,31,32],{},"Nobody answers \"launch a product.\" I think we're forgetting it doesn't have to be one. Building is easy now. The question is why.",[34,35,37],"h2",{"id":36},"building-something-used-to-take-weeks","Building something used to take weeks",[12,39,40],{},"I remember what building apps was like before agents. You drew the logic on paper, worked out how the components would talk to each other, designed every screen from scratch and made the assets from empty vectors.",[12,42,43],{},"Then came implementation, testing, surprise bugs, and whole afternoons lost to a detail that seemed tiny.",[12,45,46],{},"It was satisfying and exhausting. And you kept learning things you hadn't planned on: a simple animation dragged you into how rendering works; a performance problem made you finally understand the framework.",[12,48,49],{},"I still work a lot like that. I like sketching ideas, trying different solutions and digging into what's going on behind an implementation, even when I already have something that works.",[12,51,52],{},"Which probably explains why my computer is so full.",[34,54,56],{"id":55},"the-40-plus-projects-living-on-my-mac","The 40-plus projects living on my Mac",[12,58,59],{},"I have more than 40 side projects on my Mac. Some are pretty far along, some barely have a working interface, and a few are experiments only I understand. I've also bought more than ten domains for ideas that, for a while, got me excited enough to picture something bigger.",[12,61,62],{},"Most of them have never gone public.",[12,64,65],{},"For a while I saw them as unfinished business. Things I'd have to pick up, finish and publish someday to justify the time I'd put in.",[12,67,68],{},"But when I open those folders, I remember why I started each one.",[12,70,71],{},"There was a stretch when I wanted to understand how certain video rendering libraries worked: how to generate compositions, move elements around and export results without relying on outside tools. So I built something to play with.",[12,73,74],{},"Later it was audio systems, complex SVG animations and Three.js visual effects. Then 3D models, shaders, cameras, native interfaces, things that used to look way too complicated for my own projects.",[12,76,77],{},"Music went the same way. I wanted to understand the whole process, from having an idea to turning it into something other people could listen to.",[12,79,80],{},"A few of those experiments became projects I still maintain. Others are sitting in a folder waiting for a reason to be opened. Plenty I'll never touch again.",[12,82,83],{},"I'm fond of them. Sometimes the result was exactly what I pictured. Sometimes the idea that seemed amazing in my head fell flat once it was in front of me. I learned from those too.",[12,85,86],{},"I stopped feeling that every experiment had to become a product. Most had done their job long before I thought about publishing them. I'd learned what I wanted to learn.",[34,88,90],{"id":89},"what-interests-me-isnt-what-others-need","What interests me isn't what others need",[12,92,93],{},"I like house music, visual design, photography, animation and interactive stuff. A lot of my ideas come from there.",[12,95,96],{},"I could spend weeks building an app just for designing house record covers. I'd mess with type, composition, textures, colors and tiny details that probably only someone with my exact taste would notice. And I'd love every minute.",[12,98,99],{},"But almost nobody else is looking for that. Maybe you listen to rock and like a completely different look. Maybe you've never needed to design a cover in your life.",[12,101,102],{},"When you build something for yourself, you know the user very well. Share it, and you find needs you never thought about. What was obvious to you confuses someone else. The feature you spent days on goes unnoticed, and some small detail is what people thank you for.",[12,104,105],{},"I've come to enjoy that part too, but it means I can't only think about what I'd like to use. That's one reason so many of my personal projects stay personal.",[34,107,109],{"id":108},"the-temptation-to-ship-everything","The temptation to ship everything",[12,111,112],{},"There are new apps, tools, SaaS products, dashboards and content generators every day. I like poking around them, and some are genuinely clever.",[12,114,115],{},"But there's more and more pressure to be building and shipping all the time.",[12,117,118],{},"You finish one app and start the next. You post some screenshots, put up a landing page, announce the launch and go back to the editor for the next idea. It's easy to get swept up when your feed is full of people showing what they built over the weekend or how many apps they shipped this month.",[12,120,121,122,126],{},"Ship without care and you add to what people now call ",[123,124,125],"em",{},"AI slop",": interfaces that repeat the same patterns, tools for made-up problems, and apps stacking features with little thought about how anyone uses them.",[12,128,129],{},"That kind of project has always existed. Now we just run into it constantly, and forget it by the next trend.",[34,131,133],{"id":132},"what-im-taking-with-me","What I'm taking with me",[12,135,136],{},"I'll probably keep piling up side projects. I'll keep trying technologies I don't know, chasing strange ideas and buying a domain I won't use for months.",[12,138,139],{},"Some projects will get published. Others will stay in storage with all the experiments that taught me something.",[12,141,142],{},"If you're just starting out, I hope you get to enjoy that same curiosity: experiment, get things wrong, try again, and don't feel you have to turn every idea into a product.",[12,144,145],{},"You don't need to build another app. You need to know why you want to build it. Sometimes the answer is a product. Often it's just wanting to understand something, and that's worth it.",{"title":147,"searchDepth":148,"depth":148,"links":149},"",2,[150,151,152,153,154],{"id":36,"depth":148,"text":37},{"id":55,"depth":148,"text":56},{"id":89,"depth":148,"text":90},{"id":108,"depth":148,"text":109},{"id":132,"depth":148,"text":133},"2026-11-10","I have more than 40 side projects on my Mac and most of them will never go public. That's fine. They already did their job.",false,"md",null,{},true,"\u002Fblog\u002Fyou-dont-need-another-app",5,{"title":6,"description":156},"Building with judgment","2","blog\u002Fyou-dont-need-another-app",[169,170,171],"side-projects","curiosity","judgment","hO5VLrNHDV4sdt4_ErpFS15XHr3NJLXWfKKMT6p1uqM",[174,178],{"path":175,"title":176,"seriesPart":177,"draft":157},"\u002Fblog\u002Fmore-agents-dont-mean-better-results","More agents don't mean better results","1",{"path":162,"title":6,"seriesPart":166,"draft":157},"\u002Fes\u002Fblog\u002Fyou-dont-need-another-app",1794375123900]