Today's my birthday. And today, without planning it, my SaaS WorkoutNote shipped its 18th update on the exact same day the repo crossed 2000 commits.
I'm not going to pretend that number is objectively special. It's a coincidence of dates. But it hit me harder than I expected, so here's the short version of why.
Three years ago
I started my software development degree with one very specific goal in my head: ship my own app to production someday, with real users, backed by a repo with 1000+ commits.
I didn't fully know why that number mattered so much. I think it just felt like proof — proof that something wasn't a weekend project left half-finished, but something I'd actually keep showing up for.
What actually happened along the way
- Launched WorkoutNote in production, solo, on Laravel + Livewire + Alpine + Tailwind
- Lost all the data in a full server wipe (wasn't my own VPS at the time)
- Rebuilt everything on my own infrastructure
- Shipped a trainer marketplace with Stripe Connect, subscriptions, nutrition plans, weekly check-ins
- Built a full community system, blog module, seasonal events, admin panel — most of it rewritten more than once because v1 didn't convince me
- Applied to a stack of jobs in parallel, most of which went nowhere
- Kept committing anyway None of that shows up as a number on GitHub. But it's baked into every single one of those 2000 commits.
Today
I don't usually stop to look back — I just move on to the next feature, the next bug. But today felt like a good day to write a short letter to the version of me from three years ago, and honestly, to myself right now too.
If you want the longer, more personal version, I wrote it up on my blog: 👉 https://davidbc01.com/en/blog/2000-commits-and-a-birthday-coincidence
Currently building WorkoutNote (fitness SaaS, solo dev) — happy to talk shop with anyone else building solo.
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