Tooling Heaven

So yeah, I’ve always been a side project guy. For as long as I started coding, side projects have been my thing. When I wanted an app like Numi but for the web, I built Tally. When I couldn’t find a simple web-based markdown editor, I built SimpleDown. Hell, one of the first things I built at university was InStock, an inventory tracking tool for my dad’s warehouse.

Most of these tools were shit. Riddled with bugs, barely useable for anything outside my specific use case. However, for what I needed them to do, they were perfect. They also thought me a lot more about shipping products and building things than University ever did, and that became a huge help when I started working.

In fact, it could be said that a lot of my early year work was built around the idea of building tooling. My first day at Percolate Galactic (rip), I built a CLI version of Spencer, a random generator idea they had. Within a month that turned into a functioning website. It was dumb and pointless, but everyone in the office loved it.

Hell, I won’t go into detail now, but a majority of my blog posts over the years have been about the tools I use.

The thing about tools though, and the reason there are so many out there, is because until very recently, it was very hard to find tools that fit your use case specifically. Take content creators for example. Even back in 2012 when I would come back from school and watch YouTube everyday, you’d see an almost daily argument between people who though Premiere Pro was better, versus those that stood by Final Cut.