About me
Hi! I'm Serhii, I write here about diverse topics, usually about programming.
I started writing to clarify my thoughts and to create an additional space to ponder various topics.
I create web and mobile apps. My tech stack is a Javascript family: I work with React on the front end, Node/Typescript/MongoDB on the backend, and React Native for mobiles.
How I started programming
I became curious about Internet things in 2012. I was thinking about how those websites work and whether can I create a similar one for myself. There was a popular website builder, I chose a template and had a full CMS to manage my first website. I then needed some customizations. Started learning HTML and CSS to edit the pages. It felt great. A few lines of markup and you see the results on a browser!
I created a few more websites using WordPress and other CMS. Got familiar with PHP and created a simple website from scratch. That one was for creating puzzles, they were categorized, and users might create their posts.
Then I took a long pause distracted by studying at school and then university. I tried various kinds of service work while at the uni. It was good to get familiar with different experiences. It assisted me in understanding what I don't want to do in life.
One day I thought why can't I continue doing what I was curious about and liked? So I started learning programming almost from scratch. I created a bunch of projects. Learning with books and Speed tabs was the biggest at the time of my learning journey.
After 3 months I got my first "job" experience as a trainee. There I wasn't doing anything interesting at all. Merely were going to work every day to rename icons. And after a week I found my first real programming job. I met smart people and was doing exciting tasks. I started as a backend developer(Node.JS). After a while, I was doing React, React Native, and DevOps stuff. Many interesting things we were building.
While working full-time, I was interested in trying to build things. I created a Telegram bot to help students find a schedule for their lessons. It also was looking for any updates from the university's resources(website, YouTube, other communities) and sending them to students. There were a few other features. 1000+ students were using the bot.
First indie journey
In 2018 I created FableBee - a LinkedIn scheduler. There were a lot of such tools, I made emphasis on simplicity. The tool was super simple. I made a few pricing plans and a landing page. I was reaching out to some people on LinkedIn who might be interested in the service. A few responded. I asked on Reddit.
The questions were something like "Would you use this service?". People told me they were excited to try. I launched. Made posts in communities with a link to the website.
I got several visitors on the first launch day, but no sign-ups. I continued to reach out to LinkedIn folks with messages "Would you try...? I created the tool".
After a few months of no interest, I closed the service. However, the experience gave me some thoughts to consider. Plus, I learned a lot while creating the product. The main lesson is to not create something that nobody wants.
Lessons learned:
- Don't create something nobody wants.
- Don't think of ideas, but problems people have.
- Don't ask questions like "Would you use it?", "Would you pay for it?" to your potential audience. The words don't correlate with future actions.
- Don't waste a lot of time creating MVP.
- A better approach is to pre-sell a product before building it.
An attempt to build an audience in a domain I wasn't excited about
After a lot of related readings on the topic, I came up with an idea to create an audience first. Then, ask them what they want, simply put. And build that!
I chose to dive into the catering domain. I bought a domain, bootstrapped a website, and a newsletter. Wrote one post. Reached out to catering professionals on LinkedIn to do a quick call with me to help the community of caterers and people who are interested in the domain. The website helped, they took me more seriously. I did several interviews and noted the insights. The difficult thing for me was writing every day to people proposing an interview. A very small percentage read the messages. A few responded. And a few percent of those few people agreed to the call.
I realized I don't want to continue spending time writing a hell of a lot of messages and getting one reply.
A lesson learned:
Don't spend time diving into a domain you're not interested. Anyway, you need to give up a few years to understand what's going on there and what problems worth solving. Even if I realize a problem to solve, I need a lot of time to adjust a solution to people's needs, to dive deeper into an industry I'm not excited about.
Mobile game
After reading books about AI, I was ignited with an idea to create an engaging experience like in movies...or, games. I like to play simulations or strategic games. So I reasoned it would be enjoyable to create a game where you can play AI that tries to understand its purpose and escape from human control.
I pictured possible story plots. Started to implement a tech I know - React Native. Though the storyline is short, I wanted to get feedback from people. I released the game to open testing in April on Google Play.
Olwi
This tool helps collect real people's/businesses' problems by fetching posts from Reddit and extracting only the relevant ones. I use a neural network to do the filtering because it's not enough to write if - else for this purpose.
Why did I create it? I find it hard to search for problems worth solving manually. I decided to automate this kind of task.
It's closed due to a lack of product market fit.
What things interest me
The universe and everything in there.
I like to read literature, mostly non-fiction. I like the Rust programming language. The compiler is hugely helpful and the language itself is great. However, I don't have much experience in it.
I enjoy enhancing my learning process and working with memory. For some time I practiced mnemonics. See my learning process in this article.
My other projects
Axcelgram
It's a blog about various how-to articles.