Becoming a Slave to the Algorithm

A month after talking about how focusing on media that is simpler to create and enjoying a bumper 4 video May in the process, I have to admit I'm not sure what's happened this month. I managed a single video, a tutorial on the Python Collections module.

It's been received like a lead balloon, leading me to feel pretty underwhelmed at the prospect of creating anything at all. YouTube is a difficult mistress and learning what might take off takes a lot of experimentation. Some of my previous tutorials have taken a very long time before 'the algorithm' deemed them valuable enough to regularly recommend but now they are some of the biggest drivers of subscribers to my channel.

It also makes me think that trusting in the process of regular creation would serve me better than looking too much into the numbers of any one thing I produce. My self worth shouldn't be based on clicks and views, but I also want todays content to perform better than yesterdays.

You'll be glad to hear that most of the stories today are about developers who are doing much better online than me! I've also included a regular assortment of code as well as affiliate links to discount kindle books you might like amongst this issue.  Let me know if you’re enjoying them by responding to this email.

Until next time, keep on shipping!

Ian

Stories

I sold my SaaS for $30,000

YouTuber Adrian Twarog designed and developed a SaaS from scratch in just a month and in this video he explains how he sold it for just over $30,000.

5 Technical Mistakes I Made Growing a SaaS to $40K MRR

Jon Yongfook details the technical mistakes he's made whilst growing his successful bootstrapped business, Bannerbear.

Profitwell + Paddle Acquisition Documentary

Paddle is the payments company behind many an Indie Hacker. This is a really interesting 20m behind the scenes look at how they acquired Profitwell.

I quit my job as a Netflix engineer making $450,000 a year

Michael Lin got a senior software engineer job at Netflix in 2017. He tired of the role before leaving in 2021 and realising that money isn't everything.

Code

The SQL Murder Mystery

A fun puzzle where you use SQL queries to solve the murder mystery!

VueTailwind - Customizable Vue Components for TailwindCSS

A nice set of customisable Vue components I recently found that are designed to work well with Tailwind.

tonsky/FiraCode: Free monospaced font with programming ligatures

This free monospaced font with programming ligatures was recommended to me after querying what people use when programming.

Should You Pay for Github Copilot?

Copilot opened up to be generally available and paid for this month. In my most recent blog post I dig into whether you should pay to use the tool.

Bargain Kindle Books

Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day - Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky - £1.99 on Kindle

Amazon Unbound, Brad Stone - £0.99 on Kindle

Banking On It: How I Disrupted an Industry, Anne Boden - £0.99 on Kindle

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