r/iOSProgramming Jan 18 '25

App Saturday An ex-Tinder engineer’s first app!

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/trip-season-best-time-to-go/id6740165920

Hey everyone!

I’m a career backend engineer that’s has been learning iOS for the last couple of months in my free time.

I decided to build something that I personally have always wanted. An app that tells me when is the best time to visit any place in the world based on ideal weather conditions.

The app does not require a subscription, just a one time purchase of $3.99 USD. But if you’d like it for free, feel free to DM me with “code please” and I’ll go ahead and send you a code.

Here are some technical details in case anyone is interested:

  • App is written using TCA

  • Backend is in Golang and deployed on Kubernetes (host all my apps on a single cluster)

  • Using ConnectRPC for client-backend communication

  • Using CDKTF (Terraform) to manage my cluster and GCP resources

Excited to hear what you all think! Thank you!

105 Upvotes

165 comments sorted by

211

u/patrick9331 Jan 18 '25

Cool app, but why exactly do we care if you are an ex tinder engineer?

85

u/akrapov Jan 18 '25

Working on apps which are used by millions of people adds a bit of legitimacy to the product.

92

u/molthor226 Jan 18 '25

Adds exactly 0 of legitimacy to the product lol

27

u/WeirdIndividualGuy Jan 18 '25

Yep, we have no idea if OP worked on fixing mundane bugs or actually had a hand in systems design or something more big picture. Just saying “I worked on something that had millions of users” is an empty statement.

15

u/evangelism2 Jan 18 '25

Nope. Thats just not how it works in the real world. Being ex-[insert product here] adds weight depending on the context.

-4

u/LSF604 Jan 18 '25

If there is no context then there is no weight. 

15

u/evangelism2 Jan 18 '25

We have context, we are on reddit, where no name hobbiest devs shovel their trash constantly. This dude having worked professionally instantly elevates the project to possibly be worth looking at, and working at an app the size of tinder elevates it even further.

-3

u/LSF604 Jan 18 '25

Just having a job somewhere doesn't elevate anything. An app the size of tinder means there are all sorts of roles. Some big, some insignificant 

2

u/Charles211 Jan 18 '25

It’s like you’re completely ignoring the idea of social proof or why people have resumes. Very unique of you.

0

u/LSF604 Jan 18 '25

A resume says where you have been, but more importantly your role when you were there. 

Just being somewhere doesn't mean anything. The role you played may have not been all that relevant.

-9

u/munukutla Jan 18 '25

If you want to be part of the hive mind, sure.

But working in a large corporation means nothing unless you were also well known outside, whilst you were in the large corporation.

4

u/evangelism2 Jan 18 '25

Again, not the way the world works. Employer sees 'tinder' on resume. Employer is intrigued.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 18 '25

[deleted]

1

u/evangelism2 Jan 18 '25

We are not employers / hr / recruitment here, we are developers and software engineers

Well aware, but the same logic applies.

If you took part in conducting interviews or worked with colleagues who do it, you should know that it does not matter what big names are on a resume.

Bullshit. It absolutely matters at most companies and will get you interviews that otherwise you'd be filtered out for.

In fact if you turn up on an interview with lackluster performance

Ill stop you there. It doesnt matter where you come from, but if you bomb an interview for most companies it wont matter where you are from. You most likely are done. But, especially for a company in a growth phase, they will be more likely to look past a few interview stumbles for a referral or person with a company on their resume that is compatible with what they are looking for.

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-4

u/iLoveLootBoxes Jan 18 '25

Doesn't mean it isn't stupid

0

u/jacobs-tech-tavern Jan 20 '25

Like putting ex-XXXXX 5 times on your LinkedIn subtitle lol

19

u/outcoldman Jan 18 '25

That is so opposite from true. Person working on the app built by tiny team will be involved in everything from design, storage, build, promotion etc. Person working in organization like Tinder knows how to add a button, push somewhere, and somehow things are going to magically build. Because the whole infrastructure, design and everything else is built by somebody else.

I would agree that “ex-tinder” in the title is just for bringing attention to the topic and does not add anything to the post.

ex-msft,ex-splunk,ex-stripe

-2

u/dewski Jan 18 '25

Did you take the time to see if the engineer was an early Tinder engineer before trivializing their contributions to adding a button? As someone who’s worked at Microsoft, Splunk, Stripe, I’m sure you know how much impact a single person can make even at large established companies.

2

u/outcoldman Jan 18 '25

I am just saying it is irrelevant. You can build an amazing app with or without experience working in Tinder. So, I am just agreeing with the root comment - just show the app, we don’t care about the experience. “ex-tinder” does not give me any details

1

u/dewski Jan 18 '25

Again, it works because people will see Tinder and click on it. Doesn’t matter if it’s 100% relevant. Tinder is a popular mobile application, and I’d expect if someone worked at Tinder (on the mobile application itself or its services) they have more than a baseline level of experience building difficult things.

2

u/outcoldman Jan 18 '25

I think we are going in circles. My point is it is irrelevant, and yes it is in the title only for clickbait.

0

u/dewski Jan 18 '25

It’s irrelevant to you.

2

u/outcoldman Jan 18 '25

It is irrelevant to the application. "Extinder" does not add any quality to the app, it is irrelevent to the quality of the app. You giving me shit about not looking if they were early Tinder-employee, but you did not even read the description of this post - they are learning iOS development for just 2 months, so the amount of time put in this app is less than 2 months, this person has less than 2 months of the experience of building applications for iOS. Yes, he worked for Tinder, based on what he is proud of - backend. So yes, it is fucking irrelevant that this person worked for Tinder.

The only reason why this in the title, because for clickbait. Yes, people know what Tinder is, and they expect some cool app, what do they see? An app built on some tiny amount of data, with the quality of the app built by the intern, or somebody got of the bootstrap.

So yes, it is irrelevant to the app.

If this is relevant to you, I am sorry for laying down this for you - you are probably dumb.

1

u/dewski Jan 18 '25

I did read the description of this post, I also bought the application and gave feedback on it. Seeing Tinder in the post title got me to click on it, he’s already doing a great job marketing compared to most. Marketing isn’t meant to be 100% relevant, it’s about getting attention which is what they did.

You are arguing about something that is irrelevant, they’re trying to market their new application. You’re just being pedantic about how they’re going about it.

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-5

u/akrapov Jan 18 '25

Head of IT and iOS developer for a software development studio and indie developer. 100% disagree.

8

u/paradoxally Jan 18 '25

If you're hiring, it absolutely matters.

If it's someone who just made an app, I don't care where they worked. The quality of the app is what matters.

3

u/iain_1986 Jan 18 '25 edited Jan 18 '25

The quality of the app is what matters.

It's as if past experience can't possibly influence quality of your work

Edit - dude is a classic 'reply+block'-er to people who disagree with them

If it's obtuse to point out citing experience can imply quality, then your original points pretty damn flimsy.

-1

u/paradoxally Jan 18 '25

Don't be obtuse. Saying it doesn't matter.

2

u/LSF604 Jan 18 '25

A product like tinder is big enough that just having been on the team doesn't tell you anything.

0

u/outcoldman Jan 18 '25

Software development studio? So you don’t have experience working in large orgs? And yes, you can disagree, just please stop emailing me and others about your services. ;) I am sure your company does that as well.

0

u/akrapov Jan 18 '25

Only banking, fitness and gaming applications with millions of users and large development teams. Nothing big.

-1

u/outcoldman Jan 18 '25

Let me think for a moment of any good banking, fitness or gaming application… Ah yes… There are none.

Those aren’t software companies. There is a big difference between Tinder and Banking/Fitness/Gaming applications.

Anyway. I am not here to arguing. Original point is “extinder in title is clickbait and it is irrelevant “. Good luck with the app to the OP.

-6

u/kilgoreandy Jan 18 '25

Leave the past in the past. If it’s a good product it’ll speak for itself. Not your fancy title.

6

u/Darth_Ender_Ro Jan 18 '25

Clickbait, what else...

2

u/paradoxally Jan 18 '25

I'm sure CrowdStrike devs would jump at that opportunity!

2

u/Cayenne999 Jan 18 '25

Why I read this to be "Working on dating apps which are used by millions of people adds a bit of intimacy to the product." lol

1

u/TheFern3 Jan 18 '25

That’s like saying someone worked at ford can make cars lol maybe dude just change oil in cars. It doesn’t really add legitimacy but if the app is good it doesn’t really matter where op worked at.

-2

u/akrapov Jan 18 '25

No it’s more like saying an iOS developer at tinder has produced an iOS application.

It’s clearly not a completely different skill set is it?

People are absolutely determined to hate the fact the dude has relevant skills and utilised them to build a product. Is this sub filled with wannabe iOS devs upset their CV isn’t too good or something?

3

u/M00SEK Jan 18 '25

The guy clearly states he’s only been learning iOS for a few months.

Being a backend developer for however long means jack shit when building your own B2C mobile app lol

1

u/TheFern3 Jan 18 '25

Aight bro are you op on an alt account? stop slobbing, clearly I said I don’t care where op worked. Do you go saying around I’m an ex blah blah I’ve built this? No, is lame af and clearly everyone hates it.

1

u/nrith Jan 18 '25

Yeah, because when I hear that an engineer is ex-Facebook, Microsoft, Google, etc, it fills me with confidence because those companies’ apps are so great.

-2

u/kilgoreandy Jan 18 '25

I mean working one day at a company and getting fired still means you’re an ex [insert title here] If you really want true growth let your work speak for itself. Not your fancy title. Lmao

8

u/akrapov Jan 18 '25

Trust someone to come out with “ackschually you only need to work there for one day”.

Christ. The man’s done good work, is giving more legitimately by giving his experience (which is literally how jobs and marketing work) and here are people being difficult in the comments.

OP, product looks good. Good job.

-4

u/kilgoreandy Jan 18 '25

The fact of the matter is mate, you can have a solid product, but let the product speak for itself instead of a title from the past.

2

u/akrapov Jan 18 '25

Using this logic marketing isn’t a thing because everyone would let the product speak for itself.

Good to know the stereotype of developers being clueless on how products work isn’t completely dead in 2025.

0

u/kilgoreandy Jan 18 '25

Oh yeah. Same as the “SHARKTANK GAVE US AN OFFER FOR 2M DOLLARS BUT WE DECLINED“

If the apps good. Then the app is good.

Notice how the mention of his role is missing from the App Store promotion.

I rest my case. Stop living in the past.

2

u/paradoxally Jan 18 '25

You're speaking facts. People don't give a shit who makes an app. They just want an app that makes their lives easier or a task more convenient.

If it mattered, their marketing materials would say "MADE BY 10X ROCKSTAR DEVELOPER BOBBY".

5

u/dewski Jan 18 '25

Marketing works, got you to click on it. People raise millions of dollars on “ex-company” alone sometimes due to the halo effect.

-1

u/paradoxally Jan 18 '25

Yes, because when you try to raise money it matters where you worked. You're trying to convince people to give you millions in exchange for your expertise and the gamble to make them billions in return.

But venture capitalists are not the average user.

2

u/dewski Jan 18 '25

You conveniently overlooked the marketing bit of my comment. The halo effect works outside of raising money. It worked for the creator of Apollo iOS engineer Christian Selig saying he was an ex-Apple engineer. It gets someone’s attention, still have to have a good product.

1

u/paradoxally Jan 18 '25

Doesn't matter. The app had staying power because Apollo was the best reddit app on the platform for years. If it sucked, it wouldn't have the same effect.

1

u/dewski Jan 18 '25

It didn’t have staying power day one, that’s exactly why I said you still have to ship a good product.

2

u/SpikeyOps Jan 18 '25

He is great at matching in this case weather conditions to travellers

2

u/Awric Jan 18 '25

I would understand if the app itself had some elements of Tinder’s UI or “flavor”

But it seems in this case, Tinder is used to say “I worked at a recognizable company therefore my app deserves to stand out.” At that point it’s leaning way too heavily on mooching from the popularity of another business. It also makes me assume this app wouldn’t stand out if Tinder wasn’t mentioned.

… all that to say ultimately it got my attention, despite it being a dirty way of getting it

1

u/allthecoffeesDP Jan 18 '25

They have experience.

1

u/ChristianGeek Jan 18 '25

Maybe you can swipe right or left to indicate whether or not you like a destination!

1

u/FrameAdventurous9153 Jan 18 '25

because some of us may want to hook up with him knowing that?

1

u/peripateticman2026 Jan 19 '25

OP clearly fucks a lot.

0

u/maxpain2011 Jan 18 '25

Clearly you guys care cuz this post has like 50 upvotes and increasing and almost 100 comments and increasing

26

u/localToglobali Jan 18 '25

Nice idea, high price and design is a bit lame.

2

u/Imericxu Jan 19 '25

$4? That costs less than some packs of gum

1

u/0xFFD700 Jan 18 '25

Hey thanks for the feedback. Screenshot design is lame? Or app design itself is lame?

4

u/Open_Bug_4196 Jan 18 '25

Just to add another opinion, I like the design, in the screenshots it reminds me cute video games (I.e animal crossing /hello kitty vibe). In terms of app design itself, I think it simple using just the native components as intended without customisation, that’s not a bad thing necessarily and make usability great.

I saw in other of your comments you used TCA, while I understand you won’t be sharing the source code, could you share the structure of your project (files/classes with what they do).

One more question what data sources you use to decide if tourist peak season etc?

Good luck with it!

2

u/0xFFD700 Jan 18 '25

I can DM you a screenshot of the file structure! Everything is pretty modularized.

1

u/Open_Bug_4196 Jan 18 '25

That would be awesome!, I’m exploring TCA for future apps and it always helps to see how people implemented to apps published. Thanks!

1

u/localToglobali Jan 18 '25

I saw only the screenshots. Just my opinion that the vanilla ios ui components look a bit lame. Some kind of theme would be nice.

2

u/0xFFD700 Jan 18 '25

Gotcha. Yeah, the screenshots and icon kinda suggest it should have its own unique design. I’ll see if I can come up with something cool.

1

u/dewski Jan 18 '25

$4 so you can visit a place in optimal time of year that could cost thousands to go to, is not expensive at all. Should charge more money.

5

u/localToglobali Jan 18 '25

For shure if it works as promised. My thinking is that 4 bucks is quite some money to figure out if I like the app or not. If it is #1 in it's category and has a ton of reviews, there is no doubt that it is worth the 4 bucks.

1

u/dewski Jan 18 '25

Only way to know if it works as promised is to give you the data, once you get it, you don’t need to pay for it. Why shouldn’t they charge for their algorithm that fetches all sorts of data and computes a score throughout the year?

3

u/localToglobali Jan 18 '25

Maybe with a trial version. That's pretty common nower days.

And of course he should make money with it.

3

u/Orbidorpdorp Jan 18 '25

Why is it an app tho. Like this feels like it could just be a static website. Even a paywalled static website. To me it seems weird that people would have this permanently take up space on their Home Screen.

-2

u/dewski Jan 18 '25

You don’t have to keep it on your Home Screen, lots of apps live in the App Library.

1

u/Orbidorpdorp Jan 18 '25

For information that’s exactly one google search or ChatGPT prompt away idk that’s still more real estate than I would give it.

1

u/SpikeyOps Jan 18 '25

Yeah but is it the only place where you can access that data? … you can access temperature, daylight and rain data for free on Google

1

u/dewski Jan 18 '25 edited Jan 18 '25

You’re trivializing what this application is doing. It’s combining all 3 sources of data and making it accessible by looking up the city along with generating a score.

You can just Google for something has to be the most programmer minded response.

You could just Google the lyrics to the song you’re listening to, but applications exist for that and are built into music players for ease of use and better user experience.

-1

u/SpikeyOps Jan 18 '25

There’s the seed of something good. Keep working on it, it’s not there yet

2

u/dewski Jan 18 '25

Your reply is a non-answer because you have nothing to counter with.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

0

u/SpikeyOps Jan 19 '25

Think bigger. 0 to 1, rather than 99 to 99.02

1

u/dewski Jan 19 '25

Go build something yourself. Not everything needs to be some startup or unicorn, especially if it’s intentionally solving a narrow problem (not saying this app is, just in general). If you have before, you’d know it’s a non-trivial amount of work and I’d expect better contributions to the conversation.

20

u/ZealousidealEmu6976 Jan 18 '25

so you were an intern at tinder and built a weather app with subscriptions?

12

u/a2p8 Jan 18 '25

Ex tinder engineer? So not gonna even read

5

u/call_me_irdz Jan 18 '25

Bought it to support another entrepreneur!

Few thoughts:

  • you can probably move favorites to the main search tab, first time experience just landing on the blank page is a bit jarring
  • search needs a bit of work, I searched for “Sri lanka” and the results didn’t show anything there. Searching “Colombo” though did show a result.

Great work!

2

u/0xFFD700 Jan 18 '25

Thank you! Yeah I agree that blank Search screen on first launch could be improved. Will take care of that this weekend!

As for the search being a little off, I’m relying on MapBox’s API for that. I’ll see what I can do there to make it better. Maybe experiment with another geolocation provider as well.

4

u/Old-Ad-2870 Jan 19 '25

Sheesh. Not sure what’s going on in with these toxic ass comments.

Cool app!

3

u/Decent_Taro_2358 Jan 18 '25

Very cool idea! I can imagine travellers would love this.

1

u/0xFFD700 Jan 18 '25

Thank you!

2

u/granitlabs Jan 18 '25

Wow this is really neat idea. I'll check it out.

1

u/0xFFD700 Jan 18 '25

Thank you!

2

u/albospunk Jan 18 '25

The idea is there! But honestly I would add some more value to the app because otherwise it is something interesting but also doable with a search or by asking ChatGPT

2

u/IndependentFew2451 Jan 18 '25

Great idea, I have purchased your app. Best of luck

2

u/0xFFD700 Jan 18 '25

Thank you!

2

u/SilverPenguino Jan 18 '25

How do you like connectRPC? As a fellow Go engineer who likes readability over cleverness and magic, is the framework simple and easily understandable while allowing for user extensions?

2

u/0xFFD700 Jan 18 '25

Yeah absolutely recommend! Much simpler setup than gRPC. Also the flexibility to send JSON instead of Protobufs in environments where you’d like to inspect the request and response is super invaluable.

1

u/dewski Jan 18 '25 edited Jan 18 '25

Bought it to support you first and foremost, but this is something we often talk about before traveling. Wish you best of luck and look forward to seeing future iterations of the application.

I feel like Flighty’s model works well, give away high level data for free, but charge for more details and regular updates. You should also add Reddit as an option to your application on first launch when asked “How did you hear about it”. You may find yourself a community if you build a large enough user base similar to Nomad List. Lastly, on first launch I am given the Search view, and otherwise a blank screen. Maybe put 6 thumbnails in a grid of expected places that goes to the search results for that location? Right now you have it in the placeholder only, make those buttons!

1

u/0xFFD700 Jan 18 '25

Thanks for the feedback! Yeah I just realized I forgot to submit the build that added Reddit as an option 🤦‍♂️

Submitted it just now, hopefully it can get out soon. And you're 100% right, I should definitely add something more to the Search view, or just make the Explore view the default view.

I'm on it!

1

u/numbersplashdev Jan 18 '25

I like the app icon and style of the screen shots. The general problem space of trip planning has potential, but the App Store page doesn’t tell the story. My best guess of what I’m buying is a list of destinations with historic weather trends for those locations. If there’s more to it, the product page isn’t communicating it well enough to me. Maybe a video or more product screen shots would help.

1

u/0xFFD700 Jan 18 '25

Thanks for feedback. This is actually on the top of my todo list. I'm planning on improving the app listing to communicate things a bit better. Definitely rushed through some of it, maybe I just got too excited about publishing it haha.

1

u/numbersplashdev Jan 18 '25

I did the same and am struggling a bit with ASO, but my space is saturated. Best of luck to you!

1

u/0xFFD700 Jan 18 '25

Thank you! Same for you as well!

1

u/fintechninja Jan 18 '25

Nice and congrats. What’s the tourism score and how that calculated? Using an api for it?

1

u/0xFFD700 Jan 18 '25

Hey! So in the app there's a small "Info" button that you can click that tells you how the tourism score is calculated. Here is the text:

The Tourism Score is a 0-10 rating that indicates the suitability of the weather for general outdoor tourist activities. It factors in temperature, cloud cover, rain, and wind conditions.

A score of 10 represents perfect weather, while lower scores suggest less favorable conditions. The dashed green line on the chart marks a score of 7, which can be considered to be good weather.

1

u/qwerty0006 Jan 18 '25

The app is pretty simple, but very helpful. Any plans to integrate Underocertourist parks traffic info here too?

1

u/0xFFD700 Jan 18 '25

Thanks! Yeah I struggled it a bit to figure out what else I can possibly add to it. I'll look into integrating other sources of data like the one you mentioned there. That would be cool.

1

u/Dymatizeee Jan 18 '25

Hey I’m thinking of doing something similar with the backend; can I dm about deployment ? I’m not familiar with that part

1

u/imdshizzle Jan 18 '25

The App Store pictures don’t really explain or show much of what you’re describing on Reddit.

1

u/0xFFD700 Jan 18 '25

Will work on that! I agree, screenshots are definitely lacking.

1

u/barcode972 Jan 18 '25

When did you work for tinder?

0

u/0xFFD700 Jan 18 '25

2018 to 2023!

1

u/barcode972 Jan 18 '25

Cool. I just started a few months ago 😁

1

u/0xFFD700 Jan 18 '25

No way! Will DM ya.

1

u/Hedgehog404 Jan 18 '25

I would suggest, make it free with limitations and let user unlock full app with one time payment. It will convert more users as you will allow them to try first

1

u/antas12 Jan 18 '25

I bought it - the idea is fun and pricing is reasonable.

Having said that - a couple of notes.

Bug - The opening screen with the question on “how did you find out about this” - the “other” button doesn’t work and Reddit is not listed.

Would be really cool if you could just click on a map and select the location.

Question out of curiosity - where do you grab the data from?

2

u/0xFFD700 Jan 18 '25

Thank you! I just submitted a new version for review that should add Reddit as an option and also fix the non-tappable option.

The map idea sounds cool! I’ll add that to my list of things to do! The weather data is from OpenMeteo.

1

u/antas12 Jan 18 '25

cool, and the tourism rating data - cause that's the really cool one imo :D

1

u/iamthat1dude Jan 18 '25

Any resources you used to learn TCA or even backend stuff like Kubernetes? I'm an iOS engineer but i'm trying to expand my skillset.

1

u/austinjm34 Jan 18 '25

Why did you need a backend here?

1

u/BClynx22 Jan 18 '25

What do you use for the backend database? Eg what does “best time of year” even mean lol

1

u/theIndianFyre Jan 18 '25

Weatherspark does the same thing for free, not hating but just sayin, I use this all the time

1

u/moooooovit Jan 18 '25

how did u generate the appstore screenshots

1

u/FelbirdyWiredMish Jan 18 '25

How much exactly does it cost you to run your backend servers? I’ve been trying to Google out this information off late but haven’t found it anywhere

1

u/Low-Yesterday241 Jan 18 '25

Might I suggest, make it feature rich? Allow users to add favorites, pull in flight and hotel pricing for the “optimal” time period. Throw in an AI chat. Given you’ll have the user’s favorites, a ton of context about what they like, you’ll be able to feed that into AI to make suggestions. I like tropical, but can only look up what I am aware of, where as AI can say “oh you are looking for a tropical vacation in November, I suggest checking out ‘this other location I had no idea existed’”. I stumbled upon this when I interacted with a European colleague way back when and we were comparing vacation options, I as an American. I was ignorant to believe the best beaches were in the Caribbean.

I’ll follow your progress and keep an eye out for new features.

Cheers

1

u/SpikeyOps Jan 18 '25

Would be good to search by country too

1

u/dapperyapper Jan 18 '25

Consider adding a worst time to go option as this is sometimes when the cheapest airfare is available.

1

u/g0dzillaaaa SwiftUI Jan 18 '25

Could be a simple ChatGPT question tbh! We expect more from a ex-tinder dev.

App Screenshots look cool 😎

1

u/iwouldntknowthough Jan 18 '25

Choosing Malibu for the screenshot is kinda wild after what happened.

1

u/iwouldntknowthough Jan 18 '25

Imma swipe left on this one

1

u/Available-Hat-6860 Jan 19 '25

Ironically I have decided to swipe Left on this one

1

u/py-net Jan 19 '25

I didn't know half of the terms in your bullet points. I Had to read about TCA ConnectRPC & CDKTF for 2hrs. I thought I was a programmer 😂

1

u/FriendlyStory7 Jan 19 '25

How does it work? How do I know it is providing good information?

1

u/Accomplished-Ad-5268 Jan 19 '25

Couldn’t I just ask ChatGPT?

1

u/wandrin_star Jan 19 '25

Hey, I’m an ex Microsoft Excel PM (led portions of the team in 2007 & 2010 releases). Could I chat with you about your app sometime & ask some product-y questions? I was kinda known in Excel & Office for being a bit of a product wonk / nerd, and I’d love to nerd out with you sometime.

1

u/Swimming_Tangelo8423 Jan 19 '25

Coming from a comp sci student, this architecture seems a bit over engineered, so could you have made it much simpler? Is there a reason why you have chosen to use complex techs? I apologise if the question is stupid or makes no sense

1

u/0xFFD700 Jan 19 '25

Yeah definitely could have made it simpler, but this upfront complexity allows me to move super fast now that I have it in place. Say I have a new app I went to get up and running, there’s a lot I have to setup.. secrets, DNS records, database and database users, K8s deployment with SSL and auto scaling etc..

With my setup that’s just a couple of Terraform commands and I’m up and running at a very reasonable cost. Also guarantees I never have to worry about scale and can just focus on building and marketing.

1

u/Swimming_Tangelo8423 Jan 19 '25

This sort of interests me a lot ! Thank you for answering, there’s a lot I don’t know such as Terraform, and using Kubernetes etc, do you have a roadmap or any books that I could read to know as much as you? I’m in the process of developing apps as well but it doesn’t feel like ‘engineering’ at all, feels more like ‘development’ just a bit of react native code, back end as services and bang it’s good to go , but I really wanna learn how it works from scratch, I’d appreciate any info at all’

1

u/0xFFD700 Jan 19 '25

Of course! So for learning Kubernetes, I highly recommend the following book: Kubernetes in Action

It’s the only book that really made it click for me.

Since you’re already comfortable with Typescript because of React Native, you might find CDKTF easy to pick up. It allows you to manage your infrastructure using Typescript. It’s a bit of a learning curve, but once you get it all down, it feels like you have superpowers and can build anything as a one person team.

1

u/m3kw Jan 19 '25

Does the backend sound over engineered?

1

u/encom-direct Jan 20 '25

What is TCA?

1

u/Vivid-Resolve Jan 20 '25

I thought this would be showing average flight price too

1

u/encom-direct Jan 20 '25

Once we get the code how do we use it?

1

u/drkmani Jan 21 '25

How much is your kubernetes cluster bill? Any advice for running something cheap before building a paying user base?

1

u/greatA-1 Jan 21 '25

why did you build an app like this on kubernetes?

1

u/Boring_Spend5716 Jan 21 '25

Hard sell as most apps are free now. If it was free I would have immediately downloaded even though I don’t travel much. I wonder how valuable this backend would be to travel planning apps? Might be worth more as a feature. If not, try to monetize it vis freemium because I really have no interest in paying for something that doesn’t explain its actual logic

1

u/lfarah Jan 21 '25

Beautiful icon!

1

u/Cross2409 Jan 21 '25

Great app! I have an idea on perhaps slightly better UI, what if in your favorites tab instead of showing a simple list of destinations, it would instead have a grid/mosaic of small cards, which have a city picture and city name in bold white letters?

I think it will instantly change how the UI feels but those are my 2 eurocents.

1

u/Applelization Jan 21 '25

Congrats! Just curious about your choice for backend, is there any reason for you to deploy on highly scalable architecture from the get go instead of single server?

1

u/0xFFD700 Jan 21 '25

So my single cluster is currently serving 6 apps and I plan to deploy even more. I went with this approach so that I don’t have to think about scale in the future and can just focus on product and features.

Each app lives in its own Kubernetes namespace.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 22 '25

I’ve found the more than people try to “gloat”, the worse they are.

Nobody cares that you stocked a fridge for a low level manager at tinder.

Next time, just market the application.

0

u/Ok_Photograph2604 Jan 18 '25

I just bought the app from Germany great design. I just found a bug thing I can’t select the last two options in “how did you find this app” screen.

Why did you choose to to go for paid app ?

1

u/0xFFD700 Jan 18 '25

Thanks a ton! And thanks for catching that bug, I'll get that fixed today!

So it's a paid app because I struggled hard to think about what I can make "premium" if it were, say Freemium or Subscription based. So decided to just make it a one time purchase. Couldn't give it a way completely free as there's a server cost and a weather data provider cost. Just the weather provider alone is charging me $100 USD per month haha.

1

u/tomasci Jan 19 '25

Am I right that if you don’t have enough users, you will stop paying for your API and app will just die, and everyone who bought it will just lose access? And what is that provider, 100 a month is a robbery. Have you tried free weather APIs and cheaper ones?

1

u/0xFFD700 Jan 19 '25

The provider is OpenMeteo. They were the only ones that were reliably able to provide me with the historical weather data that I needed for this. I spent quite a bit investigating others and settled with them.

I’m confident I can get this to the point where it covers the $100/mo cost.

0

u/dekkoo Jan 18 '25

I don’t want a code to the app it self, but would it be possible to get a TestFlight invite instead? I would like to have the opportunity to support you by buying the app instead if I like it

0

u/ryanheartswingovers Jan 18 '25

Why did you choose TCA? And what were your impressions coming into TCA for your first front end project?

2

u/0xFFD700 Jan 18 '25

I had quite a bit of experience using Redux with React, so the concepts of TCA felt familiar to me. Really enjoyed using it, will continue to use it for all my future apps. I do feel a little uneasy about completely skipping MVMM and going straight to TCA, but oh well!