A Guide to Building Your Own Software
The big picture of what it means to own your own software. Web apps, backends, databases, deployment, and operations in plain words. When a custom build pays off, what it's made of, who builds it, and what it costs to keep alive.
Custom software stopped being a privilege of Google and the banks a long time ago. A booking system, an internal ordering tool, an app for your clients, a database that isn’t held together by one overworked spreadsheet: almost every company that’s serious about what it does runs on something like that today. But behind the innocent line “let’s just build an app” hide a hundred decisions you can easily drown in. And for every one of them, someone will happily talk you into whatever suits them more than it suits you.
This handbook is the big map of that terrain. It won’t teach you to code. It’ll teach you to understand what custom software is actually made of, where the money goes, where the risk hides, and where the lock-in is born that you’ll pay for two years down the line. The goal is for you to be able to make these calls yourself: tell a good solution from an overpriced one, know what to ask, and not get sold a bill of goods.
Who this is for
For founders, managers, and anyone who commissions or owns custom software but won’t be writing it themselves. You don’t need to know a single line of code. It’s enough that you carry the responsibility for whether the thing turns out well, holds up, and stays yours.
All of it is free. Read it in order to get the full picture, or just pick out the part you happen to be wrestling with right now.