Build an app to level up fast

In a typical programming job, you often are working in a team on an existing project. You can excel at your part of the project but rarely will you get an appreciation for the entire company’s tech stack.

For instance, you may become excellent at front-end development but have little experience in database design. Or you may be a pro at CI/CD but don’t know where to start with UX design. Alternatively, you may have worked with user authentication but not with data visualisation.

However, when you build your own app, you are responsible for absolutely everything and therefore learn a huge amount across a broad range of areas.

• Full-stack development & database design
• UX design
• Infrastructure & CI/CD

You may think this is where it ends. However, if you build an app for real users, you also learn a whole load about the commercial side of business too:

• Sales
• Customer feedback
• Marketing

And if you go a step further and start billing customers through a company you also learn about the admin, legal work and accounting involved in running a business.

All this being said, you also learn a wealth of valuable skills while working as a developer for someone else. Skills like professionalism, team management, and ways of working like agile, are hard to pickup when working by yourself but come naturally when immersed in a corporate environment. You can also learn a lot from developers more senior than you, and working in a team can teach you good habits like writing high-quality maintainable code.

TLDR: Combining your professional programming job with a solo app build can be a powerful combo for growing fast as a developer.