Developer shares lessons from building two side projects in public

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A developer spent six months building two side projects — Swipe Cleaner and Paper List — and documented the experience publicly. Swipe Cleaner, inspired by observing friends struggle with camera storage, uses a swipe-based interface to help users quickly delete unwanted photos, and has gained over 300 downloads with a 4.2-star rating. Paper List was created to help the developer retain information from the roughly 50 research papers they read monthly, and now has 15 weekly active users. Both apps launched with minimal features, but early shipping allowed the developer to gather user feedback within days rather than months. The key takeaway was that code quality is secondary to building something people actually want.

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