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Ask HN: Can I realistically make an app as a junior dev?

3 points by brooke1 an hour ago

I'm trying to make an app to help out my local community, but with the intention of scaling it at some point and serving a much wider community. It's a complex app with a lot of moving parts, and as a junior dev with little experience in some of the technologies I'm using, I'm going to be relying heavily on Claude. However, I know generally, Claude is only as strong as the developer using it—and I'm a junior dev. So, for example, what do I do about architecture? I can't leave the architecture up to Claude, but I'm not at the point in my career where I can design the architecture on my own without flaws.

What are y'all's thoughts on what I can learn on my own through posts/YouTube videos, vs. what I might need to hire a senior dev to help me do?

I've had this idea for a while, with the thought that I'd make it when I'm a more experienced software engineer, but there's no time like the present and I just want to bite the bullet and get started, even if it means I'll be making more mistakes and learning on the job.

For reference, the stack I'm leaning toward is PostreSQL (I don't have experience with this), Java Spring Boot (I'm pretty experienced with this), Typescript with Angular (pretty experienced), and some python (some experience). There's more stuff, like Redis (no experience).

Anyway...any help/advice on how to do this properly would be really helpful. Part of the idea of this project is just to learn, even if it means I learn a couple of months in that I have to start everything over from scratch, lol.

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