I had an idea while at an AAU tournament for female basketball. My daughter was playing multiple games and I had no idea how many minutes she played and my memory of her stats started to fade. I tried to take notes in on my phone but it was way too slow to try to record a stat and keep an eye on the game. On a drive up to a tournament, I actually tried to use ChatGPT and my experience with building code and whipped up an app that day. It worked, sort of. I was able to see stats but just for my daughter. I had no way of sharing it with anyone.
Then the season ended and I gave up.
Then high school 2025-2026 basketball season started up. My desire for an app was reinvigorated–especially having two of my daughters on varsity! I really did want an app built by me instantly but realized this was not realistic. I decided to play the long game and a) learn the code I think would move me in the right direction and b) attack with focus.
I wanted to be sure that I could make an app for my iPhone and also for other friends and family who use either Android or iPhone. I also wanted some way to share or compare stats. So that’s why Flutter stood out to me. I am able to a) develop on any machine b) Create applications and tools for web, desktop, and mobile c) They have an ecosystem for deploying to Android and iPhone.
I took a lot of time learning Dart and Flutter from Learn Flutter and Dart to Build iOS and Android Apps – Second Edition by Maximilian Schwarzmüller. I highly recommend Maximilian’s courses. I learned a lot. It gave me a leg up in understanding all the nuances of how you work with Flutter and the style and architectures to use.
Even with learning from Max’s tutorials, I found myself struggling to get the mobile app to look right. I then started to struggle with matching game stat state locally and then eventually to a server.
I felt frustrated and like a failure.
I’ve programmed for years but just not for this specific niche. I’m a video processing and computer vision person. I don’t make “apps” for a living so this is just a learning curve.
I decided to try coding with Claude in spite of my feelings toward using AI, and, well, it has actually helped me tremendously. It’s even more impactful with having knowledge of Dart and Flutter. I’m able to point Claude in a direction and move rapidly to a prototype.
The problem was I got stuck in a perfection loop. I learned this was one of my problems when I participated in the Tony Robins 2026 To to Rise Summit. I learned a lot from that and I have taken to heart one of the phrases from Tony Robbins,
“Progress is everything”,
or at least that’s how I’ve paraphrased it in my head. What’s funny is that I have read several other blogs and books that said the same thing, but, somehow Tony put me in the right state to actually let that sink it. I decided then to simply keep making progress in several things, including this app development.
So as of today, I decided not to wait for things to be perfect and I’ve pushed my code to Apple TestFlight program; I’m actually sharing the app to get it tested by people other than me–well, friends and family but that still counts. Yeah, it has a ton of bugs but that’s the point! I actually put something out there that’s not perfect.