Tech doesn't exist? Roll your own...

Frustrated at not being able to find the system you want? Just build it!

For example, I wanted a simple CMS that used Markdown instead of an HTML-exploding WYSIWSYG nightmare so I built pullnote.com.

2 reasons I'm blogging about this:

IF you're building something and you just need an ultra-simple editable area, you're free to use pullnote
To show that you CAN just build your own infrastructure - Pullnote took me just over a month.

Self-build Tech Stack

This kind of self-rolling used to not be possible (or be time-consuming) but in 2024 we can take advantage of multiple labour saving advances:

Serverless hosting add your code to a github repo, set up a Netlify/Vercel account and select your repo and that's it. If you've not tried it and are still FTPing code to a VM - GIVE IT A GO. Honestly. Obviously, you can't host persistent stuff (files, databases) but you can ALSO just plug into a cloud database (MongoDB, Supabase, DynamoDB) and upload / retrieve files (from AWS S3 or Google Buckets)
SvelteKit HTML/javascript framework that lets you write HTML (rather than hobbled HTML like JSX) and have your back-end code (private database connects, /api/calls, SSR etc) in one app - which you can also deploy on the edge (e.g. via Vercel etc)
Tailwind simplifies CSS and takes the pain out of layout to the point where you don't need someone who lives CSS to stop it breaking
AI Any of the big LLMs can write a regx better than you, and most can produce labour saving, well documented functions that work without 12 iterations sorting out your typos and mis-thoughts. GPT-4 particularly even understands the context of what you are trying to achieve and makes suggestions. The best (almost free) coding assistant you will ever have. It can't write a whole repo - it's just a tool. Lean into it. Use it.

Each of these knocks 20-30% off traditional build times. Get going!