Building in the Dark

Nobody asked me to build a star chart. Nobody needed another note-taking app. I built them because the problems were interesting and the solutions were fun.

There’s a freedom in building without a spec. No stakeholders. No deadlines. No user stories. Just you and a problem that won’t leave your head.

The best projects start as a question. “What would it look like if…” or “I wonder whether…” Those questions pull you forward. They keep you coding at 2 AM when the sensible thing would be sleep.

The Dark Room

I call it building in the dark. You don’t know what the thing will become. You’re feeling your way through the problem space. Each line of code is a step forward. Some steps lead nowhere. That’s fine.

The magic happens when the pieces click. When the star chart suddenly renders correctly and you can see the ISS tracing a line across your ceiling. When the note graph clusters and you see a pattern you didn’t know existed in your own thinking.

Ship It Broken

The first version is always broken. Ship it anyway. Not to users. To yourself. Deploy it. Use it. Live with it. The broken edges will bother you into fixing them.

Perfection is a trap. “I’ll ship it when it’s ready” means “I’ll never ship it.” Put it on a domain. Show a friend. The act of sharing makes it real.

What Sticks

Most of these projects die quietly. A repo with no stars. A domain that expires. That’s okay. The skills stick. The patterns stick. The late-night debugging sessions teach you things no tutorial can.

Build in the dark. Some of it will glow.