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Most Developers Can't Build an App in a Month—I Built This One in Just 7 Days

Ever since I realised I can use existing skills to launch my own software, my mission has been to build as many projects as possible. So I set myself the goal of building project #3 in just 7 days.

Published 12 Nov 2024 · 12 min read · Tom Gregory

Building Software Got So Easy That Anyone Can Do It

I can’t believe how insanely easy it is to build software today. I just spent the morning “writing code” without actually writing any code. Almost everything was copy and pasted from ChatGPT, stitched together, and tweaked. Only when absolutely necessary do I browse official documentation. Normally a bot gives me the exact code I’m looking for. There used to be technical tasks so far out of my comfort zone that I never considered attempting them....

Published 1 Nov 2024 · 2 min read · Tom Gregory

How To Deploy Nuxt to AWS Lambda

Nuxt’s default deployment mode is as a continuously running Node.js server. That’s a problem for developers who prefer cost-efficient serverless technologies like AWS Lambda.

Published 29 Oct 2024 · 10 min read · Tom Gregory

The Only Time I Ever Received a Cheque From America

I made money with a computer for the first time when I was 14. As a kid, I was obsessed with the internet. Weeks after installing an app that displayed ads in the browser, a cheque arrived by post for eighteen cold hard dollars. But for years after that I remained closed to the possibility of making a living online. I was writing Java code to help business owners realise their dreams....

Published 18 Oct 2024 · 3 min read · Tom Gregory

Why Senior Developers Must Write Their Own Rulebook

For the longest time, I was a stickler for the rules. In another life I could’ve been a parking warden—slapping tickets on windscreens with a smile. As a software developer, I once landed the perfect job for a rules enthusiast, at an “Agile” software development consultancy. Agile is an approach to building software that adapts to projects where the goalposts are constantly moving. I spent 2 weeks at the company’s India offices, learning the rules of Agile....

Published 20 Sep 2024 · 3 min read · Tom Gregory

The One Thing New Developers Get Wrong About Building Software

New developers mistakenly believe software development is all about for loops and if statements. These are the fundamentals of writing code, but they’re only a small part of building software. I’ve mostly worked with Java and it always confuses me when people describe other languages as “faster to write” than Java. Do a few less characters make any difference? After working multiple Java jobs, I realised that what slows down delivering new features isn’t how fast you can write code....

Published 13 Sep 2024 · 3 min read · Tom Gregory

Why I Stopped Trying To Be an Expert

I spent the last few years jumping between obsessions. First it was a software build tool. Then it was a cloud computing provider. Now it’s building my own web apps. I thought there was something wrong with me. Each obsession reached a peak, then something else stole my attention. Each time, I felt bad because I hadn’t become an “expert” in the topic before moving on. Now my perspective has changed....

Published 6 Sep 2024 · 6 min read · Tom Gregory

How I Pre-Sold 62 Copies of My Ebook Before Writing a Single Word

Writing a book is daunting enough, but the thought of putting in so much effort only to sell zero copies is even more terrifying. Although I had a topic in mind, I wasn’t sure if anyone else would be interested in it. After 13 years working in software, I knew that many developers lacked critical internet knowledge, which often held them back in interviews and stunted their career growth. The question was: if I wrote a book to solve this problem, would anyone actually care?...

Published 24 Aug 2024 · 5 min read · Tom Gregory