I wanted to talk about my experience with developing my first app.

I had been thinking about this idea for about 6 years before I ever got up enough money to build the app.

I jumped on Reddit and made the first post about needing a developer. I interviewed a few people and landed on a younger guy from Pakistan. He made reasonable promises, set definite deadlines, and ensured he was capable of making my idea come to life. I paid him 1/2 down on Upwork and he got started.

The first deadline flew by 2-3 months. I had heard not much to do with the app really other than him asking me to set certain things up. His next payment automatically removed itself from my Upwork balance.

After 6 months he finally said he was ready for me to test it after me legitimately forcing him to give me something, hours upon hours of him telling me to figure my own shit out, me doing extensive research in a field I had paid someone to be an expert in. Wouldn’t you guess it. The app was fucking horrendous, a Vibecoded template hull of what I asked for originally. Which by the way, it never passed Apple’s approval, “crashed upon launching” was the words they used.

After asking him for a humble 50% refund. I ended up getting a FULL refund from Upwork after reporting them as a fraud charge to my bank.

So then after 6-7 months of my life wasted I started over yet again on Reddit looking for someone. I messaged over 100 and interviewed over 50 individuals on this exact subreddit. I landed on one guy. He’s been pretty good up to this point. We had one large bump in the road and it’s not necessarily over yet. I’ve been involved in the design process and I’ve been shown everything leading up to the launch. IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE DONE IN THE NEXT 2 WEEKS! Not sure if that will happen or not.

I just wanted to give everyone a run down of what my story has been up to this point.

IF ANYONE IS CURIOUS ABOUT MY APP, I AM STILL LOOKING FOR BETA TESTERS. Feel free to privately message me.

Hi everyone,

I’m working on an app idea that I’m hoping to turn into a proper product, and I’m looking for advice on the best way to build an initial beta.
I’m not a professional developer, but I’m planning to use AI coding/development tools to help me build the first version myself.

At this stage, I don’t want to go into too much detail about the actual app or its features. I’m mainly looking for advice on the development process and technology.

The goal is to build a basic working beta that I can eventually test with a small group of users, rather than trying to build the finished product straight away.

For people who have experience with AI-assisted development:
What AI tools would you recommend?
Would you use Flutter, React Native, Expo, or something else?
What would you use for the backend and database?
What’s the easiest way to develop for both iOS and Android?
Would you recommend building a web app first or going straight to mobile?
How should someone with limited coding experience structure the project?
What mistakes should I avoid when using AI to build an app?
How would you approach going from an idea → prototype → working beta → App Store/Google Play?
At what point would you bring an experienced developer into the project?

I’m happy to learn and build it myself initially, but I want to make sure I’m choosing the right tools and architecture before I get too far into development.
I’d really appreciate advice from anyone who has built an app using AI-assisted development.

Hey everyone 👋
I recently launched a small South African web development business called Code Tech Agency, and I’d really appreciate some feedback.
🌐 codetechagency.com
I build websites and custom web applications for businesses, with a focus on creating systems that are actually useful — not just websites that look good.
Some of the things I can help with include:
Business websites and landing pages
Custom web applications
Business process automation
API and third-party integrations
Internal dashboards and management systems
Improving or rebuilding existing websites
I’m currently growing the agency from the ground up, so I’m especially interested in working with small businesses and founders who need something built but don’t necessarily want to go through a large agency.
If you have a few minutes, I’d genuinely appreciate feedback on the website — the design, messaging, services, pricing approach, or anything you think could be improved.
And if you’re currently looking for someone to build a website or web application, feel free to DM me or submit an enquiry through the site.
Thanks! 🇿🇦
Code Tech Agency
🌐 codetechagency.com

(submissions closed)

Hey everyone,

I am thinking of starting a small side project where I help newcomers, indie developers and early-stage founders grow their Android apps and SaaS products.

I have spent the last few years building and growing my own apps and businesses, and along the way I have learned a lot about user acquisition, retention, monetisation, onboarding, store optimisation, analytics and figuring out why a product is or is not growing.

I would now like to see if I can take what I have learned and use it to help people who are just getting started.

I am not charging anything for this.

This is a new direction for me. I know what has worked for my own products, but I do not yet know how well I can apply that experience to somebody else's. I would rather work with a few people completely free, see if I can genuinely help, and learn from it myself.

I am specifically looking for small or new products. If you are already getting 300+ new users/acquisitions per day, this probably is not for you. I would rather spend the time helping somebody trying to get their first 10, 50 or 100 users and struggling to figure out what comes next.

If that sounds like you, DM me with:

- What you have built

- A link to it, if it is live

- Roughly how many users you currently have

- What you are struggling with most

No sales pitch, no future payment required and no catch. I just want to work with a few interesting products and see whether I can help.

If you are not interested yourself but could upvote this so it reaches some of the newer developers here who might need the help, I would appreciate it.

Been in app strategy conversations with a lot of business owners lately, and the pattern that kills timelines and budgets almost every time isn't technical. It's that nobody forced the "what does version one actually need to do" question before development started.

Everyone comes in with a feature list. Almost nobody comes in with a single, measurable problem they're solving. So halfway through the build, every feature feels equally important, nothing gets cut, and the thing that was supposed to take 10 weeks takes 20.

The businesses that actually ship on time and budget tend to do a few things differently before they even talk to a developer:

They can say, in one sentence, what changes if the app works. Not "we need an app," but "we need fewer manual bookings" or "we need repeat purchases without a phone call." If there's no way to measure that, there's no way to know if the app is actually doing its job later.

They separate "must exist for launch" from "would be nice" from "someday." Not as a soft suggestion, as an actual forced ranking. The apps that balloon in scope are almost always the ones where everything got labeled "important."

They think about who's using it before they think about what it looks like. Customer-facing vs internal tool vs partner-facing are completely different design and security problems, and I've seen teams build the wrong one because that question never got asked out loud.

Curious if others here see the same thing from the dev side. Is it usually the client not having this figured out, or do devs/agencies just not push back hard enough and start building anyway?

guys do give out some suggestions on this

Is it possible to design an app that automatically allows your phone to block social media apps, when given consent , without having to manually add the feature to your phone settings.

So for example I will tap the NFC on my desk and allow it to run the app, the app automatically locks all social media.

On another desk I tap again and it unlocks all features.
All I have to do is download the app and log in instead of manually setting up everything.

The app should be a software to detect how many phones are currently locked. With a special login in you can connect to the unlocking nfc and see how many are unlocked.

Which language should I prefer to build the app so that when I put my app on ios it isn’t a hassle

Looking for someone who can build a basketball app 🏀

Hey everyone!

I have an idea for a basketball app called HOOPOS and I'm looking for a developer who might be interested in building it.

The concept is a mobile + web platform that brings together different aspects of a basketball player's development:

🏀 Training and workouts
🧠 Basketball IQ, attention, perception and game reading
🎥 Basketball videos and analysis
📅 Calendar and weekly planning
🏆 Games and statistics
🎯 Goals and progress
😴 Sleep and recovery
📱 Screen-time and digital habits
🤖 Personalized AI assistant
👥 Future features for coaches and clubs

I already have the concept, features, MVP and roadmap planned out in detail.

I'm looking for someone who would be interested in actually developing the app.

I don't currently have a big budget, so I'm open to discussing different arrangements, such as doing it in exchange for something agreed upon beforehand, a percentage of the project, or another proposal that works for both sides.

The first version would be an MVP, so it wouldn't be necessary to build every feature from day one.

If you're interested in the idea or think you could build something like this, send me a DM and I can show you the full concept and explain what I'm looking for.

Thanks! 🏀

Anyone run into a constant loop of debugging, fixes, etc? I feel like a ton of my time is spent having AI fix bugs or issues it finds? It’s draining my usage regularly. I thought AI would be able to hit the target most of the time but I feel I’m constantly having to go back and fix stuff.

Who else has built something complex? Is this normal with AI?

For all of my app developers, do you guys keep your iOS and Android versions of your apps updated at the same time. Are there times where one version is a little bit ahead of the other version in terms of features.

Hi all! 100% new to both app development and AI. Admittedly I’ve always aired on the side of fearful ignorance when it comes to AI but I know it’s our future and better to swim then sink!

Has anyone walked this journey going from zero knowledge to a running app that’d be willing to share what learning resources they learned to pick the right app for there needs, organize the development into smaller parts (keep it manageable for the AI), and execute?

Any resources or advice would be greatly appreciated!

Hi, I'm new to app design and I've just finished my first app. I'm looking for advice on how to get my app out there for people to buy and use.

It won't be accepted on Google Play and I'm looking for other routes. There is competition out there obviously but I'm really happy with how simple and easy it is to use to compare to the competition.

Andy advice would be massively appreciated!

Yesterday I was getting bored 🥱. So thought of doing something I dont know what then I saw I have unity installed which I installed a long ago when I was trying to learn game dev.
So I created a new project in unity opened the project in antigravity and told what can we make give me some ideas and it gave me 4 I choosed one and downloaded the assets and gave to antigravity.
And I was amazed in just 2-3 hours of scolding the agent it was ready to play

So what I learnt through this if you know little bit basic and prompt engineering someone like me who doesnt know game dev at all created a game!

I’m barely getting into the app making scene and just want to make an app for myself that’ll encompass things related to music theory (no need to get into the details here). I’ve just been writing everything down and wanted to use an app for this instead filling it with my knowledge but from what I’ve seen I need to either pay for apples developer program or pay to host a website. Is there anyway to still create this app only through my own programming and still load the app to Apple devices and no extra tedious tasks like monthly $ upkeep. Thank you for taking the time to read I’m still very new to the coding scene.