In the past, my failed web development projects always started the same way.

Get a brilliant idea. Think about how awesome that idea is. Dream about realizing that idea. Research frameworks and technologies, that can be used to ship that idea.

Choose some widespread trendy technology, that can be used by nonprogrammers. Realize, that chosen technology would have to be hacked inside out to meet the minimum core functionality.

Dream some more and build a perfect vision of the product in my head. While repeatedly convincing myself to learn coding.

Then finally jump the ship and buy a domain with a cool name.

Still, not a single line of code is written.

Then install Wordpress. And try to hack the core functionality by installing gazillion plugins. Even try to hack freemium Wordpress templates with copy-pasted PHP code snippets found on Stackoverflow.

Achieve basic functionality after a month of gluing plugins into Wordpress architecture. Because of no coding knowledge, basic functionality doesn't do what it supposed to do.

Dissatisfaction with the shipped products increases each day. Together with frustration, that I can't make it better, because I don't know how to code.

Eventually, interest is lost and the dream is given up. The only thing left is the domain and yearly renewal bills.

The development circle of death started and ended each time I had an idea.

After so many years of trying, I bought multiple domains, that were never used live, or lasted only a year. Now I have few domains, that will expire and I was thinking about renewing them again.

But what is the point, if I never realize my dream projects? So I decided to step up, learn to code by doing and develop an MVP for each domain, that I own. Of course, only if the product shipped is aligned with my long term goals.

For example, I won't create a knowledge library. Because there is no meaning in competing with Wikipedia. If that is the case, I will just let the domain expire.

But recently I renewed a finance-oriented Czech domain. And I told myself, that it would be a great case study of me learning new programming languages.

I chose Flask because it uses python. And python is very newbie-friendly. And React, because I heard only good things about it from my developer friend Jan Skoruba.

My MVP will be a finance-oriented mini web app calculator. And I hope Flask and React will help me to achieve functionalities I have in mind.

I will try to write about my coding attempts in this blog. It will help me to sort my thoughts, record my progress and failures. I am very excited and I hope I will finish my MVP soon.

Wish me luck!

Building MVP with Flask Day 0 - Project Goals