It's real I did it, BestList is now on the App Store.
I can't believe it, I did it ✨
When I received the email that BestList had been approved for the App Store and was ready for distribution, I wasn't excited as much as I was in shock. I couldn't believe that something I made was actually on the App Store. It wasn't just validation that I had built an app; it was proof that I could learn something completely outside my comfort zone and see it through to the end.
A few months ago, I didn't know how to build a mobile app, but that didn't scare me because I'd already been learning how to code for about two years. Building BestList wasn't about proving I could make an app. It was about testing whether everything I'd spent the last two years learning actually stuck. It became my way of turning tutorials, books, documentation, and countless hours of studying into something tangible. This project became a huge milestone for me and a real example of learning in public.
There were plenty of moments where I questioned whether I was doing things the "right" way. Coming from an administrative and operations support background, software engineering felt like learning an entirely different language. AI helped me move faster, but I made a conscious effort to slow down whenever I didn't understand something. I wanted to understand the code I was shipping, not just generate it.
In the beginning, my questions were mostly:
"How do I build this feature?"
As I continued building, my operations background naturally started to influence the way I thought. My questions shifted toward things like:
"Is this good architecture?"
"What's considered best practice?"
"How do I make this maintainable?"
"How would this scale?"
Those questions never crossed my mind when I first started building, but I've realized they're just as important as writing code.
Writing code is only one part of building software. Owning, maintaining, and continuously improving it is something entirely different.