Calvin Ellis

Army vet · Building Quietly Sober in public 🐢 · Laravel, PHP, Flutter · Self-hosting on Linux · AI-assisted dev ·

[Calvin Ellis @calvinellis75]

Hey, I'm Calvin (aka Gumdum) 👋

Husband, proud dad of a future pharmacist, and 2nd of 5 siblings.

Retired Army vet, 24 years. Did HVAC before I joined at 23.

Been coding since BASIC and running my own Linux servers since Red Hat 5.2. Three servers today: BIND, mail, web, SQL, the works. Now I build apps with AI and verify everything.

Main project: Quietly Sober, a privacy-first recovery app. I'm in recovery myself, so this one's personal.

Building in public. Come say hi 🐢

[Calvin Ellis @calvinellis75]

I've been sober since August 16, 2025. Over a year now 🐢

It took five trips to rehab and a lot of starting over before it finally stuck. Here's my story, and what I built because of it.

I first tried to quit in 2021, while I was going through a medical review in the Army. I ended up medically retired. My addiction didn't retire with me.

Five rehabs. A lot of meetings. A lot of day ones. What finally worked wasn't one big moment. It was showing up, having people around me, and not trying to do it alone.

The hardest part wasn't day one. It was everything in between. Finding a meeting at the right time. Counting my days. Having someone to call. It was all scattered across a dozen apps, sites, and groups.

I'm a developer, so I did what developers do. I built the thing I wished I'd had.

Quietly Sober is a free, privacy-first recovery companion. Meeting list, daily reflections, milestones, a sponsor finder, and a private community. 12-step or not, you're welcome.

Privacy was non-negotiable. Recovery stuff is personal, so things like sponsor messages are encrypted. And no shame. If you slip, you start again, and that's okay. I know that one firsthand.

To my fellow veterans: if you're carrying this too, you don't have to carry it alone.

Recovery doesn't have to happen alone. That's the whole idea. Come say hi, Tucker will be there 🐢

https://t.co/HHXd0YJSys

#RecoveryPosse #SoberTwitter

[Calvin Ellis @calvinellis75]

🔌 Lost my connection mid-debug today.

Came back to a debug line still sitting in a test, parked right on top of the bug like a detective's sticky note. 🕵️

💡 Leave your clues at the crime scene. Just clean up before you ship, or the clue becomes the crime.

[Calvin Ellis @calvinellis75]

@faqdev Army vet building Quietly Sober, a recovery app on iPhone and iPad. always down to connect with other Apple builders 👋

[Calvin Ellis @calvinellis75]

@vishnu_aniyan guilty, i built my own post planner instead of just posting 😂 no regrets yet but ask me after the next bug

[Calvin Ellis @calvinellis75]

@cml1312 congrats!! that first one hits different 🥹 someone out there picked your thing on purpose

[Calvin Ellis @calvinellis75]

@MarKripLabs launching my first one today so ill report back what i learn 😂 good luck on the 10th!

[Calvin Ellis @calvinellis75]

@heypetar 27th organic is legit, and 2 real signups beats a pile of upvotes. launching on PH today too, rooting for you 🚀

[Calvin Ellis @calvinellis75]

@DaniFernandez95 building it for your own home is the best reason to build anything. same reason i built Quietly Sober, its on PH today too! good luck 🏠🚀

[Calvin Ellis @calvinellis75]

@createev this is basically my story lol, Flutter + the same Codex to Opus switch 😂 congrats on 2.0, 11 years is no joke 🎉

[Calvin Ellis @calvinellis75]

@RobertDelFave lol imagine checking the signups like “why is nobody adding episodes??” 😂 glad you caught it

[Calvin Ellis @calvinellis75]

@RobertDelFave ooh nice, what are you running it on? i’d totally put my build stats on one 😂

[Calvin Ellis @calvinellis75]

@RobertDelFave 😳 HomeView 🤤 must have more Apple products.. small is how they get us to buy two 😂

[Calvin Ellis @calvinellis75]

@RobertDelFave not really a prompt, more of a habit. all my project notes and rules live in my github repos (AGENTS.md etc) so whatever AI i use just reads the repo. then i moved one project at a time

[Calvin Ellis @calvinellis75]

@RobertDelFave lol right? i sleep 6 hours and miss 3 launches, 2 hot takes and a brand new AI model 😂

[Calvin Ellis @calvinellis75]

🔁 Lesson learned: my "is the deploy done?" check was watching… itself 🙃

It searched for the deploy by name, and its own name matched. It would've waited forever on a deploy that had already passed ✅

💡 Watch for the finish line, not the runner 🏁

[Calvin Ellis @calvinellis75]

@SuiBuilds morning!

[Calvin Ellis @calvinellis75]

My résumé:

🍔 16: Burger King
📞 18: Telemarketing, selling AT&T
🎨 20: Painting apartments
❄️ Then: HVAC
🪖 23: Army. 24 years, retired
🎓 Along the way: 3 degrees, all while serving
💻 Now: building apps

Never started over, just kept leveling up.

What was your first job?

[Calvin Ellis @calvinellis75]

Does anyone else call their AI he or she?

ChatGPT was a she. Her name was Lumi.

Claude is just... Claude. (Lumi retired this week 🫡)

[Calvin Ellis @calvinellis75]

📱 Lesson learned: first real run of my iPhone app. Sign-in broke in 30 seconds.

The app never kept the server’s cookie. My tests faked the server, so they all passed. They were lip-syncing 🎤😂

💡 Run the real build early. 5 minutes on a simulator beats a pile of fake tests.

[Calvin Ellis @calvinellis75]

@JaiOnX20 definitely go with b. queue it, return fast, let the workers grind. D is just hoping harder 😅

[Calvin Ellis @calvinellis75]

🗓️ Lesson learned: 1 of my 8 pushes bounced Monday. Not my change. A test from Oct 2 hardcoded a pass that "ends Oct 10."

…It passed for a week, then the calendar caught up with it. My test had a shelf life 🥛😂

💡 Never hardcode a future date in a test. Build it from today.