Nerdy

Senior iOS Engineer building niche apps alongside a full-time job. Archery 🎯 Arabic typing ⌨️ Muslim productivity 🕋 Sharing indie app lessons.

[Nerdy @NerdyTalib]

A user told me Arabic Typing 101 didn’t give them enough practice before moving on to new letters.

So I created a mini-game to reinforace lessons.

You type the correct Arabic letter/word to climb to the next platform.

Get it wrong 3 times and the platform breaks.

Tiny feedback → much better product.

[Nerdy @NerdyTalib]

@ibnKhalid_ 😂 Damn they looked good as well. Let me know if you find anything around the area, I was interested in doing a few small things as well

[Nerdy @NerdyTalib]

@ibnKhalid_ Check Blumsom Timber Centre in Barking, never used them myself but have seen it driving around the area

[Nerdy @NerdyTalib]

Also, this is where AI coding tools are genuinely useful.

Claude code didn’t magically create the finished thing in one prompt.

But it helped me move from rough idea → playable prototype → polished feature much faster than I would have normally.

[Nerdy @NerdyTalib]

A user told me Arabic Typing 101 didn’t give them enough practice before moving on to new letters.

So I created a mini-game to reinforace lessons.

You type the correct Arabic letter/word to climb to the next platform.

Get it wrong 3 times and the platform breaks.

Tiny feedback → much better product.

[Nerdy @NerdyTalib]

The lesson for me:

Educational apps don’t always need “more content”.

Sometimes they need better repetition.

The user wasn’t asking for new lessons.

They were asking for more chances to make the new keys stick before moving on.

[Nerdy @NerdyTalib]

Arabic Typing 101 signups quietly dropped by around 50%.

I spent today digging into it.

The causes were painfully boring:
• CAPTCHA could fail silently and block email signup
• my i18n rollout had messy hreflang/canonical signals for Google

Reminder to self:
When growth drops, inspect the plumbing first.

[Nerdy @NerdyTalib]

@wakey7dev This is the part I keep thinking about.

AI has made building the first version so much faster, but reach and marketing still feel like the real bottleneck.

Shipping is easier now. Getting the right users to notice is still hard.

[Nerdy @NerdyTalib]

@ShyamSachdeo That’s a huge signal.

A lot of people spend months polishing before shipping, but getting into the store and seeing real market reaction is probably the best validation loop.

Top 10 paid action is wild for a first indie game.

[Nerdy @NerdyTalib]

@n1delka The App Store visuals part is underrated.

I’ve found screenshots are often treated like a design task, but they’re really closer to a landing page.

The user is basically asking “is this app worth my time?” before they’ve even installed it.

[Nerdy @NerdyTalib]

@SamiBuildX App Store Connect + subscriptions can be weirdly unintuitive the first time.

I’d double-check that the in-app purchases are fully created, attached to the app version, and not just sitting separately in the subscriptions section.

That gap catches a lot of people.

[Nerdy @NerdyTalib]

@tarredev This is usually the best starting point for niche apps.

When you’re solving something you personally feel, the first version tends to be much clearer.

The hard part comes later when you have to work out which parts are only useful to you vs useful to a wider group of users.

[Nerdy @NerdyTalib]

I’m going to treat this account more seriously for the next 30 days.

Less app link dumping.

More:

• What I’m building
• What I’m learning
• What broke
• What users actually care about
• Building niche products alongside a full-time job

[Nerdy @NerdyTalib]

I bought X Premium for a month as an experiment.

Not really for monetisation. I want to get better at sharing the process of building apps instead of only posting when something is finished.

Today I shipped across 3 products:

🎯 AI session analysis for my archery app
🕋 A prayer notification bug fix for Salah Companion
⌨️ Optimisation work on Arabic Typing 101 for teachers

Different niches, same lesson:

Users don’t care how clever the tech is.

They care whether it solves the exact problem they opened the app for.

[Declassified UK @declassifiedUK]

Israel's parliament has passed a law today authorising the death penalty - exclusively for Palestinians.

There are over 9,300 Palestinians in Israeli detention.

The executions will be carried out by hanging.

Does @Keir_Starmer still consider Israel an ally?

[State of Palestine @Palestine_UN]

In reality, the headline should read:

“Israel tortured and starved Palestinian child, Walid Ahmad, whom it held hostage under administrative detention, without charge, in its prison.”

[Declassified UK @declassifiedUK]

❗️We've identified the man filmed intimidating Al Jazeera journalists in London -- he's a serving Met Police officer.

https://t.co/GU8K8b5DaT

[⚢reign @r31gnn]

how the fuck do you people not see these are concentration camps???

[Dan Qayyum @DanQayyum]

I'm sorry but how on earth is this not front page news everywhere? A child. Cigarettes extinguished on his body. A metal rod inserted into his feet. In front of his father. This is documented, filmed, and handed over through the Red Cross. Where is the ICC? Where is the outrage from those who lecture the world about human rights?