As a developer who's shipped lots of projects, I've learned one truth the hard way: real speed comes from eliminating repetition. Boilerplates are awesome they give you solid foundations like clean configs for CI/CD, Docker, SEOs and services. They save hours and keep everything consistent and reliable.
But here's where most devs stop... and where you can pull ahead.
The next level? Build custom tools.
Picture this: you want to add a feature to your project, then you use a simple dashboard or CLI you created that asks a few questions about your project stack, feature type, other features and spits out perfectly tailored, clean configurations. No bloat, no missing pieces, just exactly what your project needs.
Why does this change everything?
It multiplies your expertise across every project.
It enforces your best practices automatically.
It turns setup time from hours into minutes.
Let's be honest,
Great developers don't just use tools they build tools. Think about the legends behind Rails, Laravel, or even internal platforms at big tech companies. They invested upfront to create accelerators that paid off forever.
You don't need anything fancy to start. A small script today becomes your personal superpower tomorrow.
You're capable of this. Seriously one weekend project could transform how fast you ship code from now on.
So go build that tool you've been thinking about. Your future self (and every project you'll ever start after) will thank you.
What's the coolest custom tool you've built to speed up your dev life? Drop it in the comments I'd love to hear! 👇
Top comments (2)
Really enjoyed this — the idea of build once, reuse forever is something I’ve come to deeply appreciate over the years as well. It’s not just about boilerplates or templates, it’s about capturing the intent and best patterns you’ve learned so future you (and teammates) don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time.
One of the reasons I started myapi.rest was exactly this: I kept rebuilding the same small utilities in every project, and it always felt like wasted effort — especially when APIs could do these things consistently and thoughtfully. Having a place you can reuse that is predictable and clear lets you focus your creative energy on the real problem at hand.
You're spot on, it's all about capturing those hard-won patterns and intent so developers (and teams) can skip the repetitive grind and jump straight to solving the actual problems.
Love that you took it a step further with myapi.rest! Turning those recurring small utilities into a reusable, predictable API service is such a smart move. It frees up so much mental space and creative energy exactly the kind of leverage we're talking about.
That's the beauty of building your own tools (or services) once it's there, it's a force multiplier for every future project.
Super inspiring, definitely checking it out.
If anyone else is tired of rebuilding the same helpers, this sounds like a game-changer.