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Progress Thread: SAAS and Beyond

A detailed account of a Fastlane process...

Brandon B

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Hey gang! I’m jumping in. Like many others have done, I'm starting my own progress thread for the purpose of keeping myself accountable, and to help others learn from my journey.
Quite honestly, I’m starting this journey from sort of a down-and-out state of my life. I won’t go into details, but that’s the reality. Here's the plan.

Goals

  • Build a SAAS (software-as-a-service) “business system” that will set my wife and me free from our day jobs and fund our lifestyle.
  • Pay down unnecessary debts.
  • Take any excess money (beyond our living/lifestyle means) and invest in a "money system."
  • Sell the business system and exit with the money system established...maybe. (If I'm happy with what I'm doing, I might not exit).
  • Live off the money system. Enjoy retirement & donate to causes I believe in.

Plan Details​

Phase 1​

Study up on coding and copywriting. I work in the tech field. I have an education in web development, but my programming skills are rusty and I need to go through a handful of Udemy courses that I have purchased a while back to brush up. I already know "how to code" but I need to hunker down and learn a few concepts a little better.

I also want to go through some of the more famous copywriting sales letters and copy them by hand. Probably the Gary Halbert stuff, and many of the stuff on swiped.co. I remember Jon Benson once said that whatever business you're in, you should devote a large percentage of your time to learning sales copy. I will be doing that.

The programming language that I am most fluent in is JavaScript, all the way from the front into the back end. My bread and butter will be the MERN stack. And of course HTML and CSS. All of this is dependent, of course, on market needs and what the product(s) require.

You can do a heck of a lot with Node these days, and once I combine that with front-end skills it should cover me for what I plan to do. Honestly, I have more work to do in educating myself on dev-ops more than anything else.

I'll start out using PWAs (progressive-web-apps) for the mobile versions of my apps. Not a fan of using the App/Google stores since I lose some control.

Phase 2

Build a couple of practice projects. After going through my Udemy courses I want to build at least one or two practice projects that I will offer for free just to get my feet wet in the SAAS world.

I play the guitar. For quite some time I’ve had an idea to build a practice app for guitar. I will likely use this as a starter project. I’ll market it on guitar forums and then get feedback from users. The goal of this project is to simply develop a full-stack application. It may be something I offer for a fee, but I'll explore that later.

Phase 3

After reaching this point I’ll have to assess the situation further, but as of now, my plan is to develop my MAIN product in this phase. It really just depends on what the needs are in the marketplace, and what gaps I think I can fill. It may mean taking an already existing market and adding a twist. I may use intentional-iteration (II) to develop multiple applications/websites, etc.

I'm very familiar with the thread by @eliquid and have studied it very much.

Phase 4

Possibly sell off business(es) and invest it into a passive money system. This is where “retirement“ comes in. I would be looking at my options at that point, but real-estate is high on my list of investment ideas.

Phase 5

The grand vision. Aside from buying a few toys for myself and probably a vacation home or two, I want to use my money for political causes. I’m almost 40 and I see the direction a lot of things are going in the United States, and I’m not happy about it.

At this point in the game, I would be looking to be a donor to political causes that align with my beliefs to make some change in the world. When I was younger I used to be motivated by the material things in life, but as I get a little bit older I start to see the way things are trending in the world and I am scared for the world my kids and grandkids will have to live in.

Summary​

That’s really about it. I have lofty goals but I believe that I have what it takes to make it work. A criticism of this plan could be that I'm choosing a business model before I find a need. I understand that, but I simply believe that the demand for cloud-based software is not going anywhere. I'm sure finding holes in the marketplace won't be too difficult. If not, I'll just create a Blue Ocean. ;)

I’m going to shoot for weekly updates to this thread to let everyone know how I’m doing. Thanks for reading and I hope you can benefit from my journey as I document it here!
 
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Brandon B

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I just deployed the first version of the small project I spoke about in the previous post. I don’t quite have all the functionality that I originally discussed, but I got something up, live, and deployed! That was my only goal for this little mini-project ... to boost confidence, learn some dev ops, and just get something deployed.

I didn't bother buying a domain for this yet, since it's about learning right now. It's a VPS I spun up at Digital Ocean. Had to spend a couple of hours setting it up and getting my workflow down, but I think I got the flow worked out.

Check it out if you want. It's nothing fancy. It’s a simple to-do list application that uses local storage in your browser. Nobody else will see items if you add a task, including me, to add items. It does not persist data to any server or database yet, but I'll be working on rounding out the application this week.

Here it is: To Do List App

I'm also excited about the fact I can add it to my home screen on my iPhone and it works as a PWA.

Despite the application is so simple, I gained a major boost in confidence by just getting this thing up live. It wasn’t about making the next Facebook or Twitter. It was just about getting something out there live to the world, to give me the confidence to push forward.

I’m going to call this version 0.0.1. I’ve been reading up on semantic versioning as well, trying to learn that too.

I’d like to build on this application and get used to making updates and deploying updates. I’m trying to get the workflow down that I need to eventually deploy something bigger.

As I’ve mentioned in my first post, dev-ops was one of the major things I wanted to brush up on, and I am accomplishing that task so I consider this little app a success.

Future tasks for this application​


As I mentioned, I’m not using all of the features that I originally wanted to use. I wanted to develop a full stack MERN application Instead I’ve just developed a tiny single page application that doesn’t make any API calls. Here are the features I’d like to add to this app for practice over the next week.

  • Add a local database. I could use a cloud server but since I’m a fast lane and all, I’m all about control. I want to keep that data on my server for now.
  • Email notifications sent to me when anyone interacts with my application. Just for the learning experience.
  • Improve on using React as a front-end framework. I have used react before but I’ve never built anything with any significant size with the application. I want to learn it as my go-to framework for front end work.
  • Tying the backend with the front-end, API/AJAX requests within React.

When this is complete I’ll call this project done and move onto the guitar practice application I discussed in my first post.

That’s it for now. It's almost 3 am, and I have work tomorrow :zzz:. I will update again when I’ve built out some more functionality to this app that I’ve mentioned already.

P.S. Here's a recent YouTube video that I watched and found inspiring.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCRMzMnAb40

P.P.S. After reading through this post I can see that my grammar and phrasing are not the greatest. I was pretty sleepy and some of the text came from my dictation. I apologize for any sloppy wording and grammar.
 
Last edited:
D

Deleted50669

Guest
The asynchronous stuff is tricky to get the hang of, but obviously, it's essential for the web. Webpack can be a pain in the a$$ as well. I agree about SVG, and everything moving toward vector graphics. Then fonts, icons, etc. I'm probably going to use Material-UI for this app I'm about to start building.

Web development often seems like a moving target. I have come to the realization that I just have to dive in and start building something, and that's what I'm doing now. (See my next post).

React was my choice because it seems like it has a massive ecosystem, and StackOverflow has about every problem served up on a silver platter these days. I've dabbled in Angular and to be honest, Vue is my favorite. I love that it's not maintained by a tech giant, and seems like the "rebel" of the 3.

I am just choosing React because the future hiring pool will probably be massive in the next several years in case I need help. I've also found that learning React forces you to learn a lot of valuable parts of vanilla JavaScript (mainly higher-order functions). I'm not as familiar with Java. I had one class in college with it, but the majority of my schooling focused on C++, and then basic Javascript, HTML/CSS, etc. I think I even remember a class with learning ASP.

In terms of mindset, I've found this meme to be true. :playful:
View attachment 36004
I've been busy plugging away, but I'll have to check out your progress thread(s) if you have one... or other threads. I'm not super familiar with what you're doing. I wish you luck whatever it is!
You'll never know everything about web development. It is an ocean. Just master the parts you need for your project. For a chat-based app, websockets. For an CRUD-based app, HTTP patterns. React + Axios + Redux is almost always the easiest path forward for a CRUD based app front end. I advise putting in the time to learn and use TypeScript. It will help you reason about your codebase once it gets large (this is a bigger deal than it sounds - I've seen repos slowly devolve into unnavigable spaghetti monsters due to poor patterns and lack of type definition).
 

Andreas Thiel

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Interesting. Can't wait to see how this develops.

but I simply believe that the demand for cloud-based software is not going anywhere

I have a hard time finding opportunities. I think my main issue is that B2B always comes with huge sales related expectations that are not easily automated ... and B2C is harder to monetize.

So I think you are right to be wary of the "just put it in an appstore" approach.

Personally I would probably look into taking cues from people who sell information products and try to sell a B2C subscription service - where the app itself is free but you need an account to use it ... which seems to be what you have in mind!?
 

afrankmore

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Hey gang! I’m jumping in. Like many others have done, I'm starting my own progress thread for the purpose of keeping myself accountable, and to help others learn from my journey.
Quite honestly, I’m starting this journey from sort of a down-and-out state of my life. I won’t go into details, but that’s the reality. Here's the plan.

Goals

  • Build a SAAS (software-as-a-service) “business system” that will set my wife and me free from our day jobs and fund our lifestyle.
  • Pay down unnecessary debts.
  • Take any excess money (beyond our living/lifestyle means) and invest in a "money system."
  • Sell the business system and exit with the money system established...maybe. (If I'm happy with what I'm doing, I might not exit).
  • Live off the money system. Enjoy retirement & donate to causes I believe in.

Plan Details​

Phase 1​

Study up on coding and copywriting. I work in the tech field. I have an education in web development, but my programming skills are rusty and I need to go through a handful of Udemy courses that I have purchased a while back to brush up. I already know "how to code" but I need to hunker down and learn a few concepts a little better.

I also want to go through some of the more famous copywriting sales letters and copy them by hand. Probably the Gary Halbert stuff, and many of the stuff on swiped.co. I remember Jon Benson once said that whatever business you're in, you should devote a large percentage of your time to learning sales copy. I will be doing that.

The programming language that I am most fluent in is JavaScript, all the way from the front into the back end. My bread and butter will be the MERN stack. And of course HTML and CSS. All of this is dependent, of course, on market needs and what the product(s) require.

You can do a heck of a lot with Node these days, and once I combine that with front-end skills it should cover me for what I plan to do. Honestly, I have more work to do in educating myself on dev-ops more than anything else.

I'll start out using PWAs (progressive-web-apps) for the mobile versions of my apps. Not a fan of using the App/Google stores since I lose some control.

Phase 2

Build a couple of practice projects. After going through my Udemy courses I want to build at least one or two practice projects that I will offer for free just to get my feet wet in the SAAS world.

I play the guitar. For quite some time I’ve had an idea to build a practice app for guitar. I will likely use this as a starter project. I’ll market it on guitar forums and then get feedback from users. The goal of this project is to simply develop a full-stack application. It may be something I offer for a fee, but I'll explore that later.

Phase 3

After reaching this point I’ll have to assess the situation further, but as of now, my plan is to develop my MAIN product in this phase. It really just depends on what the needs are in the marketplace, and what gaps I think I can fill. It may mean taking an already existing market and adding a twist. I may use intentional-iteration (II) to develop multiple applications/websites, etc.

I'm very familiar with the thread by @eliquid and have studied it very much.

Phase 4

Possibly sell off business(es) and invest it into a passive money system. This is where “retirement“ comes in. I would be looking at my options at that point, but real-estate is high on my list of investment ideas.

Phase 5

The grand vision. Aside from buying a few toys for myself and probably a vacation home or two, I want to use my money for political causes. I’m almost 40 and I see the direction a lot of things are going in the United States, and I’m not happy about it.

At this point in the game, I would be looking to be a donor to political causes that align with my beliefs to make some change in the world. When I was younger I used to be motivated by the material things in life, but as I get a little bit older I start to see the way things are trending in the world and I am scared for the world my kids and grandkids will have to live in.

Summary​

That’s really about it. I have lofty goals but I believe that I have what it takes to make it work. A criticism of this plan could be that I'm choosing a business model before I find a need. I understand that, but I simply believe that the demand for cloud-based software is not going anywhere. I'm sure finding holes in the marketplace won't be too difficult. If not, I'll just create a Blue Ocean. ;)

I’m going to shoot for weekly updates to this thread to let everyone know how I’m doing. Thanks for reading and I hope you can benefit from my journey as I document it here!
Very excited to see how this progresses..
 

Brandon B

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Task for the upcoming week: Develop and deploy a dummy "todo" style app, using MERN stack. No authentication yet, just a simple app that persists data. There are plenty of tutorials on the web about how to do this. Will find one of them to follow.

Purpose: Improve my knowledge of dev-ops. To further learn the flow of using Docker and Git and figure out how to deploy an application to production. Also, to boost confidence in myself that I can actually pull off something like this and build an actual SAAS. :)
  • Develop a simple todo app using MERN stack
  • Learn more about Docker (containers, various commands, Docker files, etc)
  • Push it live to Digital Ocean or Heroku, and possibly other cloud platforms. This is the biggest learning task for me at this point.
  • Post again here when finished. Shooting for 1 week to accomplish this. 11-29-2020.
Onward I go!
 

Andreas Thiel

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Oh, guess I misunderstood your plans for week 1. Thought you just wanted to work on the topics you mentioned, not that you wanted to accomplish all of them in one week :happy:.

Good job. Definitely a good start.

We know about your MERN stack ... but what are your dev-ops plans?

Only setting up the MERN stack itself? Securing the server? CD/CI as well? Cuncurrent version management for your code? Docker? Are you thinking about scalability at this point, or do you save that for later?

Don't really know much about PWAs. What did you have to do to get it to work as one?

Btw, I don't think the way you think about the commandment of control is all that healthy in this context.
If there are reasons to use a cloud service (AWS, GCE, Heroku, OpenShift) you can probably go for it with little risk.
The main reason I see for self hosting is the better learning experience and potentially saving money.
You would need to rely on very exotic features of those providers to give up control in a way that prevents you from moving to another provider. Not sure if such features even exist and you'd just have to be aware of the pitfall to avoid it.
 
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Brandon B

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I just finished up going through a couple of my Udemy courses to brush up on React/Redux (a front-end framework for building web UIs). I've temporarily left "tutorial hell," but with web development feeling like whack-a-mole in terms of skill subsets required to know, I'm sure tutorial hell is a place I'll have to dip back into often.

Main Announcement​

Tonight I'm starting the development of my first official full-stack project, which I will deploy. It's going to be the guitar practice tracker (and more???) app that I referred to in my first post. I already own the domain I want to use, and I will reveal it when I get closer to deployment. Commerciality is not my main goal with this project, rather getting a full-stack app up and running. I'm easing into Phase 2 that I discussed.

Do I know everything I need to know? No, but I know enough to build something. And building something that works is the only goal at this point.

Here are the features I want to have for this project.
  • Authentication/authorization
  • Confirm password/forgot password feature
  • Email notifications for users and myself for various user activity.
  • CORE FEATURES OF APPLICATION
  • Backend API that stores data for the app. Most likely hosted with MongoDB Atlas
  • Frontend UI, using React/Redux/React-Router. Heroku or my own VPS ???
  • Frontend public-facing pages (home page, various landing pages, sales pages, blog).
  • Perhaps more... don't want to increase the scope too much beyond this.
I may market it on guitar forums/Facebook groups. Not sure yet. As I mentioned, I just want to get something deployed.

Target deployment date: Feb 1, 2021

That's it for now. Will update more when I get a chance. It's getting late and I have coding to do!

P.S. After reading through this post in this thread, I had a heading that said "Future tasks for this application." I was going to add more features to that little to-do app I linked to. I decided to pass on that and learn React/Redux further. I'll be adding those additional features into the app I'm about to build. (Nobody may care about this, but I'm just addressing it anyway).
 
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Brandon B

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I have a hard time finding opportunities. I think my main issue is that B2B always comes with huge sales related expectations that are not easily automated ... and B2C is harder to monetize.

So I think you are right to be wary of the "just put it in an appstore" approach.

Personally I would probably look into taking cues from people who sell information products and try to sell a B2C subscription service - where the app itself is free but you need an account to use it ... which seems to be what you have in mind!?
I share many of these thoughts. I won't rule out a content system, or perhaps a "data system" that provides industry insights...I've got some ideas, but nothing serious yet. Not deciding on B2C vs B2B at this stage. I appreciate the advice.
 
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Brandon B

Contributor
Read Fastlane!
User Power
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Sep 29, 2020
20
22
Indiana, US
Oh, guess I misunderstood your plans for week 1. Thought you just wanted to work on the topics you mentioned, not that you wanted to accomplish all of them in one week :happy:.

Good job. Definitely a good start.

We know about your MERN stack ... but what are your dev-ops plans?

Only setting up the MERN stack itself? Securing the server? CD/CI as well? Cuncurrent version management for your code? Docker? Are you thinking about scalability at this point, or do you save that for later?

Don't really know much about PWAs. What did you have to do to get it to work as one?

Btw, I don't think the way you think about the commandment of control is all that healthy in this context.
If there are reasons to use a cloud service (AWS, GCE, Heroku, OpenShift) you can probably go for it with little risk.
The main reason I see for self hosting is the better learning experience and potentially saving money.
You would need to rely on very exotic features of those providers to give up control in a way that prevents you from moving to another provider. Not sure if such features even exist and you'd just have to be aware of the pitfall to avoid it.
In these early days, I basically just wanted to launch something. Something tiny, so I could get in the groove of deploying, updating, and adding features. I want to get that workflow in my tool bag to give me the confidence that I can do it again on bigger projects. That is all I’m focusing on at this point. Basically I’m creating a playground server/app to test on.

Your points are taken about the control over the data. I realize that a decent size application will probably require 3rd party hosting. Scale isn’t the first thing on my mind as much as deployment workflow.

Trying to become intimately familiar with bash, git, version control, logging, cron jobs, email, etc. My day job is working with Windows, so I’m trying to get used to Linux. I have various experience with Linux over the years but I need to round it out a bit.

About the PWAs. The Facebook package create-react-app comes with that baked in, and that’s what I used for development on this. I have more to learn about them but it’s basically a way to gain native functionality with service workers. You add a shortcut to the site to your home screen on your phone, and it behaves somewhat like a normal app. Pretty cool.
 
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Brandon B

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I hate frontend frameworks!

That's all. Nothing more to add right now. Just feeling frustrated about frontend stuff. I don't want advice or motivation. I'm just in tutorial hell, and anxious to escape.

Staying the course. Already have some app ideas in the hopper, but just trying to master React and Redux right now. It's a pain, but once I have it down, I'm confident the rest will come a lot easier. Backend stuff is so much easier to grasp than this crap.

I've also been trying to get as much copywriting study/practice in as I can.

After all, what would a progress thread be without a little venting?
 

Andreas Thiel

Silver Contributor
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Yes, especially getting the asynchronous parts right with functions, callbacks and scope issues with your variables is no fun. And these days you have to learn additional technologies like webpack along with the framework ... and that is unintuitive, horribly documented and it changes enough to be unrecognizable every few minutes. Just being able to deal with SVG graphics requires the weirdest contorted maneuvers ever.

I read a book about React. I think it was "React: Up & Running". Looked like one of the more straightforward frameworks with a clean API, but probably the devil is in the details ... as always.

I remember the great first impression that GWT made, because it was so close to (Java) backend programming. At some point everything was a mess and all the boilerplate work turned out to be hell.
We went for Vue.js with VueX and Vue-Router. The advantages were apparent from day one but it took months until we had the important details figured out.

I find it interesting that you feel that way even with Node.js as your backend. Always thought that feeling exists exclusively for Java programmers.
 
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Brandon B

Contributor
Read Fastlane!
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22
Indiana, US
Yes, especially getting the asynchronous parts right with functions, callbacks and scope issues with your variables is no fun. And these days you have to learn additional technologies like webpack along with the framework ... and that is unintuitive, horribly documented and it changes enough to be unrecognizable every few minutes. Just being able to deal with SVG graphics requires the weirdest contorted maneuvers ever.

I read a book about React. I think it was "React: Up & Running". Looked like one of the more straightforward frameworks with a clean API, but probably the devil is in the details ... as always.

I remember the great first impression that GWT made, because it was so close to (Java) backend programming. At some point everything was a mess and all the boilerplate work turned out to be hell.
We went for Vue.js with VueX and Vue-Router. The advantages were apparent from day one but it took months until we had the important details figured out.

I find it interesting that you feel that way even with Node.js as your backend. Always thought that feeling exists exclusively for Java programmers.
The asynchronous stuff is tricky to get the hang of, but obviously, it's essential for the web. Webpack can be a pain in the a$$ as well. I agree about SVG, and everything moving toward vector graphics. Then fonts, icons, etc. I'm probably going to use Material-UI for this app I'm about to start building.

Web development often seems like a moving target. I have come to the realization that I just have to dive in and start building something, and that's what I'm doing now. (See my next post).

React was my choice because it seems like it has a massive ecosystem, and StackOverflow has about every problem served up on a silver platter these days. I've dabbled in Angular and to be honest, Vue is my favorite. I love that it's not maintained by a tech giant, and seems like the "rebel" of the 3.

I am just choosing React because the future hiring pool will probably be massive in the next several years in case I need help. I've also found that learning React forces you to learn a lot of valuable parts of vanilla JavaScript (mainly higher-order functions). I'm not as familiar with Java. I had one class in college with it, but the majority of my schooling focused on C++, and then basic Javascript, HTML/CSS, etc. I think I even remember a class with learning ASP.

In terms of mindset, I've found this meme to be true. :playful:
states-of-a-programmer.png
I've been busy plugging away, but I'll have to check out your progress thread(s) if you have one... or other threads. I'm not super familiar with what you're doing. I wish you luck whatever it is!
 

Brandon B

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You'll never know everything about web development. It is an ocean. Just master the parts you need for your project. For a chat-based app, websockets. For an CRUD-based app, HTTP patterns. React + Axios + Redux is almost always the easiest path forward for a CRUD based app front end. I advise putting in the time to learn and use TypeScript. It will help you reason about your codebase once it gets large (this is a bigger deal than it sounds - I've seen repos slowly devolve into unnavigable spaghetti monsters due to poor patterns and lack of type definition).
Interesting. I've dabbled with Typescript while learning Angular. Do you have any good books/blogs/websites/courses that provide advice on how to avoid the poor design patterns you speak of? (I know I can Google it, and look myself, but wanted to see if you had specific suggestions).

Learning web sockets is another skill I'd like to learn soon, as chat is a feature that could be useful in any application. For now, I'm just working on a basic CRUD app (see my previous post about it). I'm planning on using React/Redux/Axios as you've mentioned.

Thanks for the tips!
 
D

Deleted50669

Guest
Interesting. I've dabbled with Typescript while learning Angular. Do you have any good books/blogs/websites/courses that provide advice on how to avoid the poor design patterns you speak of? (I know I can Google it, and look myself, but wanted to see if you had specific suggestions).

Learning web sockets is another skill I'd like to learn soon, as chat is a feature that could be useful in any application. For now, I'm just working on a basic CRUD app (see my previous post about it). I'm planning on using React/Redux/Axios as you've mentioned.

Thanks for the tips!
As far as learning resources, when I was getting started I used Udemy and scanned github for starter repos to look at how they structure their front end directories. As far as udemy courses, Andrew Grider is one of the best for front end stuff. I'd recommend this course, since it has a focus on using react hooks:


As far as TypeScript, idk if I'd recommend a whole course. Instead, check out a few of the important features such as type and interface definitions. There are lots of youtube videos on using typescript with react. If you use create-react-app to make a new repo you can add "--template typescript" to initialize the repo with support for typescript.

Feel free to tag me with any questions as you go (although usually stackoverflow will be all you need on the front end).
 

Andreas Thiel

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The part about this being an ocean is so true.

Seems you are separating public pages and the SPA? Probably a good idea.
I remember I wanted to look into SEO for SPA pages. In order to accomplish that you have to look into server side rendering. The tutorials I found were way too basic and you are forced to make infrastructure decisions early on. Hope you don't need search engines to crawl your SPA content. Not sure if parts of the React ecosystem already solve that problem for you, though.

Java is interesting these days because of modern capabilities and improvements in the Spring Framework, but I would not recommend it for traditional monolithic solutions.

You won't find anything interesting I have done here. I have started progress threads, but am struggling to actually work on the projects.
I wrote about my "billion dollar idea" (at least arguably) here: EXECUTION - The CASE and CAPE Master Plan

But for now I can't work on such a huge project and will look into VR content creation ... which is related and will hopefully help one I get back to developing the SaaS solution: EXECUTION - Let's Try 180 degree VR content creation
 
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Brandon B

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I'm Back
With my tail tucked between my legs, this is my announcement that I'm back to working on my plan and I'll be posting regularly to this thread again. A lot of "life" has happened since my last post and I have simply gotten sidetracked with my vision. I let myself down, but it's time to get back at it. I'm not getting any younger and I'm sick of sitting on the sidelines in the slow lane. I'm ready to get back to learning, building, and launching something, ASAP.

Here's my plan in a nutshell (mostly re-stated from my first post).
  1. Launch a "dummy" Saas app. A guitar practice helper application that is set up for payment processing, and all front-end pages. This is a "scratch my own itch" type of project that I need to get out of my system. I've wanted to build it for a long time. But I'm also looking at it as my informal apprenticeship in creating a fully functional saas application. I've switched from using Node as my backend to Laravel, simply because it seems to be tailor made for Saas apps and it is a better fit for what I'm doing. Probably go a React front-end. Or I might just stick with the Blade templates that Laravel recommends. I'll figure it out as I go.

    Target launch: 30-45 days. No later than May 20th, 2023

  2. Take what I learned from building the first application and launch a "real" app. Something that has a bigger potential that can go fast lane. I'll brainstorm ideas at that point and launch something. I've got ideas for this on my radar.

    Target date range to launch 2nd app: August 1, 2023
These numbers are fairly arbitrary, but I think they are realistic based on my skillset.

My biggest priority is to move quickly. I'm fresh off of reading the book 7-Day Startup. I learned a lot from reading that. Granted, I'm not launching anything in 7 days, but the principles have been a big inspiration. By learning to create full-stack apps, I'll be in a position where I can whip up a lot of apps and iterate if I need to.

I've also been inspired lately by lurking on the forum and reading this post:


Time to get busy. I'll update more as I proceed.
 

Brandon B

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- Name chosen for guitar app
- Domain name purchased
- Email account up and running
- Beginning active development on app
- Still trying to figure out how to integrate front-end pages (sales pages, purchase pages, etc) across one single domain. I'd love to be able to use a WordPress blog to promote this application as well as use it for my sales pages, but not exactly sure yet..
 

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