I have spent the last few months developing InsideStack, a curated tech news site that aggregates thousands of feeds. I have learned a ton along the way. I fell in love with the TanStack stack, SSR with bun, I switched from FastAPI to Litestar for my Python backend, self-hosted my own Postgres, got hands-on with Nginx, and wrote my own deployment scripts with pyinfra to deploy both backend and frontend safely to Hetzner in just a few seconds.

Learn new skills every day

I have picked up so many new skills in a short time that it is hard for most people to believe. And my background is not even in software engineering. I did a PhD in theoretical statistics, have won multiple international machine learning competitions and work as data scientist in professional life.

Building apps is fun

I have enjoyed these last months and could not wait to invest my spare time in this project. I have polished coding patterns in both frontend and backend and was implementing more and more features that came to my mind. I knew that it was unreasonable to pour so much effort into a project before even validating the idea. But the dopamine rush was so overwhelming that I did not mind.

Launching app means facing reality

And last month, the moment finally arrived when I decided to launch my app. That meant I could no longer focus solely on building new features, but I also had to start driving traffic to it. Unfortunately, people do not get excited about yet another app launch, especially, with all the AI slop and the AI agents flooding the web. So I started writing social media posts, hoping people would engage and was bracing myself for them to tear my idea apart in seconds.

Reality is exhausting

This is wearing me down and the worst part is that you have to repeat it. Attention spans are incredibly short, and even a good post only drives traffic for a day or two. And a good bunch of traffic is coming from bots rather than humans. These activities are distracting me so much that I cannot write my code as efficiently as I am used to. I have the greatest respect for all developers who stick with this for years, patiently working until they finally get the attention they deserve.

Need to find the fun

To survive this time, I need to find the fun again. I am not sure will be able to. I might abandon this project and rush into the next crazy idea that I have in mind. InsideStack is obviously not the greatest idea, but I think it well executed and I like to use it. I do not have any pressure to succeed and it only costs me 15€ per month. I improved my skills which makes the time worthwhile, and challenging myself keeps my mind sharp. Much more than the repetitive work that finances my life.