Dev.to
7/6/2026

The Honest Struggles of Building Your First Full Stack App
Short summary
A Kenyan apprentice built a full-stack secondhand marketplace and discovered that 60% of development is debugging and learning core concepts (CORS, JWT, databases), not writing code. Real struggles: silent database failures from schema mismatches, laptop death mid-project, and hours finding four-line fixes. The takeaway: commit daily to GitHub, always verify database schemas before coding, and build for real users.
- •Full-stack development is 60% learning/debugging, not coding
- •The problem is rarely where you think it is—debug systematically
- •Commit daily to GitHub; real problems with real users fuel motivation
Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.
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