Launched my first mobile app after learning to code for the past 9 months | Hacker News Reader

Launched my first mobile app after learning to code for the past 9 months

40 pointsPeterStrelec36 comments

Hey everyone! My name is Peter and I just launched my first-ever App in Google Play after learning to design and code for the past 9-10 months!

I launched a free App called Clever Plant app. An app that helps you grow plants and connect you with a plant-loving community.

Basically, I come from a family of florists. For my entire life, I have been dealing with everyone asking me how to take care of some random plants, and I got fed up with it.

One day when I was thinking about startup ideas something clicked - let’s create an app that helps you grow plants together with an exciting plant-loving community! Growing your plants doesn't have to be boring so let me try to change this.

And so the Clever Plant idea has been born.

After listening to a bunch of Y combinator lessons to learn how to validate the idea and research the competition I and my friends got to work and start learning how to design and code.

As we started with big dreams and a million features we want to add to our app, we soon realized how hard building an app is with zero tech knowledge.

But long story short, here we are! The app is live and ready to use, albeit with much fewer features than we initially planned to add!

This is our first version of the Clever Plant App, and we are eager to hear your feedback!

The link:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.app.clever...

Congratulations for getting this done. A very small percentage of folks who want to do this actually do it.

My constructive feedback is that the app asked me to register immediately. I didn't really get an idea of why I would get value from it.

Consider giving me a little tour or letting me browse before I have to give you my email address? Thanks and good luck!

this 100%

also --> it should be free for consumers

is there b2b potential?

It is 100% free! For b2b I was thinking about also selling flowers through the App but not much more. Any ideas?

Allow people to give "stars" to their favorites posters/commenters like reddit gold.

This is in the pipeline already!

why should it be free to consumers?

Because it yet lack functionality that consumers would pay for it. I will add those in later stages of development

Thanks, appreciate it a lot!

This is a really good point, and I am on it to change this! Thank you for your input again!

A short 2 minute screencap video on Youtube with a voiceover, demonstrating the functionality and value proposition would be a wonderful marketing tool for this. I don't really understand what the purpose is for this based on the description provided (besides reminding when to water my plants)

Or, using an online Android emulator like Appetize.io[1] (Not affiliated in any way) to get early user feedback or demonstrate functionality without them having to download the app might also be helpful...

[1] https://appetize.io/

Oh sweet! Will look into it, thanks a lot!

> This is our first version of the Clever Plant App, and we are eager to hear your feedback!

Looks really nice and clean for the first version of your app. Great work and congrats on the launch!

Thank you so much! Really appreciate it!

Not sure if the problem is your end or mine, but when I tried to add a multi word password it didn't treat that field like a normal password field, so my keyboard entered spaces between each word. This has not happened for any other apps or sites when entering passwords previously

Interesting, I no one has reported this kind of bug to me yet. Will look into it, thanks for letting me know.

What did you learn? What framework did you build your app on? Where did you host it?

Having achieved all this. Anything you wish you has done different - like learn some other course or use some other framework. Something you feel is the wrong path to take and must be avoided at all cost?

I started learning with Code acedmy courses for web design and then just started working on my project with first designing everything in Figma, and converting the design into react native. Backend is firebase.

Yeah, I would just launched it as soon as possible and start building in public sooner. So I would get the market validation a lot faster and could improve the app and what I have to add / change based on user feedback.

I see one issue with the data safety declaration on Google Play. It states that no data is collected or shared with third parties. On your website you declare the opposite. Besides that, looks very nice!

Gotcha! Gonna change it on my website! Thank you!

Haven't downloaded the app but from the screenshots, that's a lot of features - very impressive for 9-10 months of learning!

Curious - did you have a background in tech?

I work in marketing, so I use Figma and some basic html and css on daily basis, but otherwise no. Graduated from physical therapy haha.

Incredible! I'm on a somewhat similar journey - do you mind if I get in touch with you?

Don't mind at all! Find me on Linkedin: Peter Strelec

Btw guys, if anyone here would want to join the project as a developer, I am open for all proposals and fresh ideas to implement!

I'm trying to register, but it says my account was already used... Any reason you know why?

Either way, cool app so far!

Did you try with different usernames? Maybe there is a slim chance someone already used your preferred username.

I tried numerous different ones, my issue is that my email address is apparently already taken...

Can you try resetting the password?

Reset it, set a new password, but now it simply says 'Something Went Wrong' as a notification.

I did, but it now says that an 'Error Occurred'

It works now! Not sure whan happened, but I am very excited to try this out!

It's kind of ironical that the pictures on google play only include an iPhone.

Hahaha, I did not think anyone would care. But if you noticed, than I must change it.

even the UI is of iOS, I think you use a Mac and React Native to develop, and take screenshots on the simulator and upload to Android.

Awesome, nice for less than a year of learning! How do we get plants added?

Right now, there is already a list of around 60 plants that you can choose from. So now in this first version you can't add any plant you want, but have to browse among the existing. So if you have a plant that is available in our dataset, you can select it and create a watering schedule for it.

Just mentioning that you might want to add cannabis plants, for homegrowers that might be really great since it is abit hard to regulate.

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