The first time I designed something that came to life with code it was a simple slide a ring across a bar game in unity. It looked pretty bad but it was alive and I was proud of that. I wanted to make it better but C# was driving me nuts so I scoured LinkedIn for someone who knew what they were doing with C# and gave them an offer they couldn’t refuse (or could refuse, glad they didn’t). I ‘d design whatever project he had and he’d help me with code on mine. We ended up making a mobile game that won a few awards and got some small funding.
That was somewhat the beginning of my journey as an entrepreneur. I say somewhat because I had tried a few things prior to this game but they never really materialized like Mzito (the game) did. I left the company as they continued with games, I went on to do a host of other things, some really cool and impactful and others just meeh😪.
Building these products alongside great developers taught me how to think and work like a dev first, as a designer. I love working with technical people, the right ones really work fast, smart and things move along quite efficiently, but I always had side quests that I didn’t want to bother these devs with because they all had a lot on their plates already.
For a long time I would try python to help bring these side quests to life, then no-code tools such as Softr + Airtable got me a step closer but they never really hit the right spot as far as execution, efficiency and scale was concerned. Until late 2024 when things finally started to change.
I bumped into Bolt and within a few short minutes of telling the AI what I wanted, it output this simple website that gives you songs that were released on the day/month of your birthday. It was a good one but Bolt wasn’t too different from the other no-code tools that I had already been using. I also didn’t have anything major I wanted to work on so I quickly forgot about it.
This year I learned about Replit and boy has it been a life changer. Granted, I have had to learn a lot of backend know how from ensuring APIs are consumed right to some things as simple as not exposing keys on the frontend because security, to working with 3rd party APIs like payment, email and social media APIs. It has been a fun ride building what I have been working on with Replit for the last 4 months (will share soon).
I don’t need to have a database on Airtable, a front-end on Softr use another 3rd party for API connections etc. I can do all these within Replit. I rarely even design in Figma anymore, I do all of that right within Replit, and share with devs, they see the flows in real time.
I’m still learning a lot especially as far as security and building an efficient application are concerned but Replit has helped a lot. If you are designer who works with devs then Replit should be the next tool that you add to your work flow.
Build something cool, get users and test in less than a week. If you have devs on your team it’s even better as they can guide you on the dos and don’ts on what makes an app efficient.
Replit is the new Figma 😅.
