I spent five years building a webapp and got my first $1 (2022)

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Overall reaction to the story and app

  • Many commenters find the long, solo effort inspiring and relatable, especially for people who love building large projects for their own sake.
  • Several praise the MIDI web app itself as “really good,” fast, simple, and approachable, especially compared with complex DAWs.
  • Some view it more as a learning/personal project than a serious business attempt, since there was no pricing and revenue came via GitHub Sponsors.

UI, design, and accessibility

  • Strong criticism of the extremely low-contrast light text on light background; multiple people call it nearly illegible and urge using default/darker text colors.
  • A short technical digression on contrast ratios and newer accessibility metrics (APCA) concludes that the current design is wildly unsuitable for body text.
  • Workarounds like reader mode or Dark Reader are mentioned as making the article readable.

Tech stack churn and “shiny object” syndrome

  • The repeated rewrites (CoffeeScript → ES6 → TypeScript, React → Riot → Material-UI → styled-components, etc.) are seen as a classic cautionary tale.
  • Some argue a “boring” stack like jQuery or PHP would have shipped sooner and focused effort on the product. Others note that a complex, stateful UI would be painful in jQuery alone.
  • Multiple comments say learning via rewrites is valuable, but extremely inefficient if the goal is to ship quickly.
  • One thread notes that LLM-based coding works better with older, stable APIs, giving another reason to avoid chasing the latest framework.

Product-market fit, MVP, and pivoting

  • Several people share stories of overbuilding, only to discover no product–market fit.
  • Strong advocacy for launching minimal versions, reducing features, and iterating based on real users rather than endlessly adding “one more feature.”
  • Clear distinction drawn between:
    • Adding features = refining the solution to the same core problem.
    • Pivoting = changing the core problem, target user, or fundamental approach.

Money, first dollar, and funding

  • Many relate to the emotional impact of the first $1–$5 earned; it’s described as uniquely validating.
  • Some share contrasting outcomes: from thousands in monthly revenue to six-figure losses over many years.
  • GitHub Sponsors is described as effectively non-viable for income; Patreon is seen as worse in some ways.
  • Discussion of how people afford long projects: usually via day jobs, freelancing, or prior savings, not large upfront capital.

Broader indie/web reflections

  • Comments lament web’s trend toward monopolization and ad spend dominance but also stress that bootstrapping small, niche tools is still viable.
  • Debate over “outdated” tech (PHP, jQuery, file-based routing) versus modern stacks; several argue that many community biases against older tools are shallow or inherited.
  • Some emphasize that it’s legitimate to build primarily for learning or personal satisfaction, even if the product never finds a market.