Imagine a world where the ability to make a personal app like this is actually as easy as making a home-cooked meal; a skill passed from parent to child in the natural course of growing up.
I started a newsletter with very quick tips on cooking if you ever want to learn. It's easier than you think! https://aldente.substack.com
Making a worthwhile mobile app in a few hours is still mostly a dream.
When cooking, you make a fresh copy of a meal according to a recipe. A fresh copy of an app is of not much use; it's as if you needed to invent a new recipe and then cook it.
Cooking really tasty dishes takes experience; but the same holds for software engineering.
1. Start with an “easy” cookbook. There’s a whole genre of cookbooks for people starting out in their own or newly single dads. One of my first was “Dad’s Own Cookbook”, which has decent recipes that aren’t a huge production. After that, get the “Joy of Cooking”, which has a huge number of recipes from many cuisines. Also, take a look at Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”. You may not be interested in many of the recipes (e.g., aspic) or even French food, but I found it very helpful to see how a “master” recipe could be forked into many different dishes.
2. When you make something for the first time, follow these rules. - Read the ENTIRE recipe carefully before you start.
- Follow it exactly. Don’t substitute anything or “add your own twist”. You gotta eat every day, so you’ll get a chance to do that soon.
- Prep everything in advance. Dice the onions and put them in a bowl. Open up the can of tomatoes. Peel the carrots, chop them, and put them in another bowl. Measure the spices out into a shot glass. Yes, you will have to do a few more dishes. Yes, you will have some dead time while the oil heats up or the onions soften. When you’ve more experience, you can start interleaving things but in the meantime, you’ll avoid burning things while you learn how much time and attention various things take.
- Clean as you go. Having a cramped, cluttered counter stresses me out and often leads to mistakes.
- Try new recipes out under low-stakes conditions, not when you’re hosting your boss and girlfriend’s parents.
3. Get a decent knife and learn how to use it. You don’t need a $500 Japanese Santoku, but get something decent and keep it sharp. There are standard ways to dice an onion (etc). Do them smoothly first and the speed will come. If you’ve got friends in food service, they might be willing to help. (Exception: tourné is fairly silly)
4. Have fun and don’t take this too seriously. If all else fails, just order pizza.