Join me for my very first solo developer retrospective! I'm breaking down everything that happened in July after launching my first Flutter application. We'll look at the 1000+ downloads on the Google Play Store, the unexpected crashes from third-party plugins, and the decision to pull the app from the Samsung and Huawei stores.
In this devlog, I share my biggest lessons from the past month, including the right way to use LLMs, why setting up a CI/CD pipeline is a non-negotiable time-saver, and my philosophy on building a distribution engine for your products. We'll also cover my plans for August, where the theme is "Clean Up" – fixing technical debt, getting the app to 0% crashes, and launching my next project. If you're on your own indie developer journey, you don't want to miss these real-world insights.
Timestamps:
00:00 - Solo Developer Retro: July
00:13 - My First Flutter App: 1000 Downloads!
00:22 - Why I Ditched the Samsung & Huawei Stores
01:34 - The Crash Problem (It Wasn't My Code)
02:30 - The AdMob Monetization Story
03:28 - Why CI/CD Pipelines Are a Game Changer
04:29 - Starting a YouTube Channel
06:05 - The New Keto App I'm Building
07:28 - Lesson 1: How to Use LLMs Correctly
09:52 - Lesson 2: Why Secondary App Markets Failed
10:36 - Lesson 3: You MUST Set Up Pipelines
11:50 - Lesson 4: Don't Be Your Own Distribution
14:29 - Lesson 5: Flutter is Great, Plugins Can Hurt
15:26 - The Plan for August: Clean Up!
17:47 - Fixing My App & Future Monetization
19:04 - Launching The New App (Sooner Than Planned)
19:59 - The Goal: 30 YouTube Videos
21:17 - Final Thoughts & What's Next
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