Comment by appjeniksaan

After taking a break from frontend development from a large corporate client. I wanted to get into iOS development to see how mature SwiftUI has become and finally get a chance to build my first iOS app. The result of that: PeekCard - https://peekcard.app

A simple iOS app for scanning (almost any) barcode and storing in the app, or adding it to your home via a widget. No tracking, no subscriptions, just a simple free app that is pretty simple to use and does the one thing I want it to do.

Building my own software has been super refreshing compared to working within a large organization. I really enjoy the path of just developing and it is fun to get into something different than React/TypeScript and Java. It was also really interesting to go through the process of publishing the app in the Apple App Store. Heard so many bad stories, but it was OK. Definitely not great, but not as bad as I was expecting.

Two learnings from this so far:

1. I do not think that I would want to do any Swift development in a large organization. Super fun to build indie style, but I can't imagine having to support 5+ years of old iOS versions. 2. I ditched most social media a long time ago and if you do not have any personal promotion channel, you are super limited into reaching any potential users for your software. I still do not know how to deal with this; I do not have any ambition to go back into building a social following. I just like building the "thing", but just building it is definitely not enough to get any traction.

For the current project I am building another iOS app, a bit more complex, also something I want to use myself. I was considering building with React Native, but ditched that plan because when I am building for myself, there would (I think) be a lot of overhead in testing Android.

For now I really like what I am doing, but financially I think I should consider going back to Java/Scala or React dev for a corporate client :-|.