Two things I wish I knew when I started to build an internal tool framework
I'ma self-taught developer on my journey to become a successful indie dev.
For more content follow me on Twitter @adrianthedev
Search for a command to run...
I'ma self-taught developer on my journey to become a successful indie dev.
For more content follow me on Twitter @adrianthedev
No comments yet. Be the first to comment.
I want to share my experience regarding AI-driven development.I know it's not a new and shiny thing, and it's been around for a while now, but some things should need some time to take it through its

I think it's important that the Ruby community knows what just happened in San Francisco last week. 400+ Rubyists got together and shared ideas and visions. They exchanged opinions and presented the past, present, and future of Ruby. I went to very ...

Tl;DR; We're taking a break with Friendly.rb. We had three beautiful editions, incredible fun, and learned so much in the process. This happening changed us, the hosts in ways we could not imagine. We're taking a break because things have happened in...

What do you need in your digital brain? That's how I think about Avo now. It's not some closeted admin panel where only five people dare to go because touching the data wrong might crash the app. It's the place where you invite your whole team to run...
Here's something that's been on my mind lately about the Rails ecosystem. For the past 10 years, there's been massive investment in dev tooling, especially for JavaScript and TypeScript companies. They take some of that funding and deploy it to marke...
Own it - A blog from Adrian Marin
24 posts
Sharing my lessons on becoming a thriving #indiedev.
๐ Launching Avo into the world! - ๐ฅ A beautiful, easy-to-use Ruby on Rails admin panel framework
There are two things I wish I knew when I started to build an internal tool framework. ๐ If you do them properly, you'll be on the right track.
People want to get started fast. Fast is the main word here. They have a problem to fix, an idea to share, or a requirement, and they want to see it done. They don't want to lose momentum. When they lose the momentum, they lose the focus and drive to fix the problem. They might lose interest and might even stop working on the problem.
That's a bad outcome for them (obviously ๐).
It's kinda like writing. When you start to write something, you don't start with building the editor, designing the font, or cutting down a tree to make paper out of it. You just need to write; to put your ideas there; to get them out of your head.
It's the same with folks trying to build the tools that they need.
They! Just! Need! To! Ship! It! Fast! ๐
After they've built most of what they needed on the surface, they'll start to dig in and build the nitty-gritty. They'll want to customize something deeper than the basics. That's when you'll want to give them those options. Try to put yourself in their minds and think about what you'd need if it were you building the product.
Can they change the colors, the spacing, the query, the formatting? Great! That means they can carve out the experience they want to give to their users.
This is exactly the way we approach building Avo. We let our users build 70-80-90% of their tooling with incredible ease. We give them great defaults and amazing features that they will eventually use and customize deeply.
Short version: Keep it simple to start with, but make it easy to customize later ๐