Let me begin by stating something I know in my heart of hearts to be true.

**Being a nerd is the coolest thing in the world**

With that said, I do think the word “nerd” has hijacked that amazing feeling of curiosity and passion, bordering on obsession, that you get when you try to understand anything deeply.

I seriously believe the world would be a better place if people started chasing their curiosity without the constraints of being productive, getting rich, or even mastering anything. Half the fun is in the journey, after all.

For most of my professional life, I’ve been a sidelines enjoyer of hacking together software and hardware, as I hope it’s coming across in my writing. I used to walk the halls of shopping malls and pride myself in knowing exactly what material, machine and process were used to make anything I walked past. And today I can proudly say I can do the same party trick with the internet around us.

And yet, it took me an embarrassingly long time to learn how to code myself. Only up until very recently do I feel confident launching my own experiments with code, and I’m still far from doing it with any semblance of proficiency.

But I’ve recently had a major breakthrough.

I was recently playing around with integrating a telegram bot to my ReMarkable tablet so I could curate my morning reads. Found out it was pretty straightforward, because the RM runs on a modified version of Linux. One pleasant afternoon later, and I had my digest ready to go.

Later that same month, I tried making a bot to give me ideas on stuff to tweet about. Again, pretty straightforward, and free.

Later still, I made an Obsidian integration that parses my curated links and loose notes, suggests which folders to place them in, and gives me a breakdown of the content based on what *I* find cool about each link. It only cost me a couple of cents in LLM API costs.

And, last week. Anthropic gave me $300 in Claude Code credits to do with as I pleased.

Am I dreaming? Why is it that devs have so much more fun online?

When I walked down shopping mall aisles and pictured how stuff was made, I would think to myself I could just as easily recreate that chair, or bag, or funko pop; in my workshop with some elbow grease and maybe a couple nicks from my tools.

My motto when I tried launching a manufacturing studio was “Give me enough time and money, and I’ll build you a Ferrari, or a golden dildo.”

And as I mentioned on my previous piece, I switched to online products because software is a more efficient way to distribute ideas worldwide, at least while I get the financial backing to buy myself a factory.

Companies understand that the best audience to cater to first is developers, cause they’re the kind of people who’ll play around with the mangled mess and have fun while they’re at it. They’re the ones who’ll find what everyday people will eventually resonate with, because it has heart behind it (even though it’s usually behind a paywall).

Devs get free shit because they’re the ones creating the value companies can tap into. But it doesn’t need to be that way, at least not necessarily. You can just cut out the middleman and have fun with the stuff that’s available online, for yourself and the people around you.

It’s only recently that it’s started to click just how right this approach is, especially nowadays.

Being able to whip up any idea for essentially (and oftentimes, literally) free, is the most exhilarating feeling anyone could hope for, compounded by our current moment in time when we’re all waking up from the algorithmic haze of consumption we’ve all been stuck in for a decade.

My social feed at the moment is filled with awesome builders trying out their ideas, making incredible products.

Today’s piece is both celebrating them, and encouraging anyone who’s ever had a “million dollar idea” to jump in and actually learn the tools of the trade. It may seem intimidating and scary at first, but I promise the water’s nice.

I remember a scene from the Ashton Kutcher Steve Jobs film (and probably the real event it was based off of) where they go into a computer shop and try to sell a computer board as a final product. They get admonished and laughed off. “People don’t want to build a PC, they just want to plug it in and use it.”

I get the sense those times may be coming to an end for a very vocal minority of the internet, and I couldn’t be more excited for it.

We are all sold on the idea that people don’t want complexity. That a finished product’s job is to abstract away every piece of the puzzle that doesn’t make a buck or doesn’t feel intuitive. Well, I’m here to tell you that’s the best part of anything out there.

Yeah, there’s a learning curve to making products, or hacking away in a workshop, or making music or art. But that’s the best part you’re trying to tuck away behind an inaccessible curtain.

Devs have gotten this from the start, and nerds in general. While we live our lives thinking of how to optimize or simplify, they’re out there going deep, having fun, and connecting with other people over how cool it is to play around in the messy behind the scenes.

I know building or creating isn’t for everyone, but I’m increasingly noticing how people want to pull that curtain away and see the cogs running. Let everything that you’re building keep that to heart, and I promise you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Let me begin by stating something I know in my heart of hearts to be true.

**Being a nerd is the coolest thing in the world**

With that said, I do think the word “nerd” has hijacked that amazing feeling of curiosity and passion, bordering on obsession, that you get when you try to understand anything deeply.

I seriously believe the world would be a better place if people started chasing their curiosity without the constraints of being productive, getting rich, or even mastering anything. Half the fun is in the journey, after all.

For most of my professional life, I’ve been a sidelines enjoyer of hacking together software and hardware, as I hope it’s coming across in my writing. I used to walk the halls of shopping malls and pride myself in knowing exactly what material, machine and process were used to make anything I walked past. And today I can proudly say I can do the same party trick with the internet around us.

And yet, it took me an embarrassingly long time to learn how to code myself. Only up until very recently do I feel confident launching my own experiments with code, and I’m still far from doing it with any semblance of proficiency.

But I’ve recently had a major breakthrough.

I was recently playing around with integrating a telegram bot to my ReMarkable tablet so I could curate my morning reads. Found out it was pretty straightforward, because the RM runs on a modified version of Linux. One pleasant afternoon later, and I had my digest ready to go.

Later that same month, I tried making a bot to give me ideas on stuff to tweet about. Again, pretty straightforward, and free.

Later still, I made an Obsidian integration that parses my curated links and loose notes, suggests which folders to place them in, and gives me a breakdown of the content based on what *I* find cool about each link. It only cost me a couple of cents in LLM API costs.

And, last week. Anthropic gave me $300 in Claude Code credits to do with as I pleased.

Am I dreaming? Why is it that devs have so much more fun online?

When I walked down shopping mall aisles and pictured how stuff was made, I would think to myself I could just as easily recreate that chair, or bag, or funko pop; in my workshop with some elbow grease and maybe a couple nicks from my tools.

My motto when I tried launching a manufacturing studio was “Give me enough time and money, and I’ll build you a Ferrari, or a golden dildo.”

And as I mentioned on my previous piece, I switched to online products because software is a more efficient way to distribute ideas worldwide, at least while I get the financial backing to buy myself a factory.

Companies understand that the best audience to cater to first is developers, cause they’re the kind of people who’ll play around with the mangled mess and have fun while they’re at it. They’re the ones who’ll find what everyday people will eventually resonate with, because it has heart behind it (even though it’s usually behind a paywall).

Devs get free shit because they’re the ones creating the value companies can tap into. But it doesn’t need to be that way, at least not necessarily. You can just cut out the middleman and have fun with the stuff that’s available online, for yourself and the people around you.

It’s only recently that it’s started to click just how right this approach is, especially nowadays.

Being able to whip up any idea for essentially (and oftentimes, literally) free, is the most exhilarating feeling anyone could hope for, compounded by our current moment in time when we’re all waking up from the algorithmic haze of consumption we’ve all been stuck in for a decade.

My social feed at the moment is filled with awesome builders trying out their ideas, making incredible products.

Today’s piece is both celebrating them, and encouraging anyone who’s ever had a “million dollar idea” to jump in and actually learn the tools of the trade. It may seem intimidating and scary at first, but I promise the water’s nice.

I remember a scene from the Ashton Kutcher Steve Jobs film (and probably the real event it was based off of) where they go into a computer shop and try to sell a computer board as a final product. They get admonished and laughed off. “People don’t want to build a PC, they just want to plug it in and use it.”

I get the sense those times may be coming to an end for a very vocal minority of the internet, and I couldn’t be more excited for it.

We are all sold on the idea that people don’t want complexity. That a finished product’s job is to abstract away every piece of the puzzle that doesn’t make a buck or doesn’t feel intuitive. Well, I’m here to tell you that’s the best part of anything out there.

Yeah, there’s a learning curve to making products, or hacking away in a workshop, or making music or art. But that’s the best part you’re trying to tuck away behind an inaccessible curtain.

Devs have gotten this from the start, and nerds in general. While we live our lives thinking of how to optimize or simplify, they’re out there going deep, having fun, and connecting with other people over how cool it is to play around in the messy behind the scenes.

I know building or creating isn’t for everyone, but I’m increasingly noticing how people want to pull that curtain away and see the cogs running. Let everything that you’re building keep that to heart, and I promise you’ll be pleasantly surprised.