The latest articles on DEV Community by Sandro Hu (@oranguengineer). https://dev.to/oranguengineer https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F3902487%2Fdda4efa0-028d-4a75-9d37-298cd834d95b.png https://dev.to/oranguengineer en Sandro Hu Thu, 14 May 2026 20:34:58 +0000 https://dev.to/oranguengineer/building-weremember-in-public-day-0-why-another-calendar-app-mb4 https://dev.to/oranguengineer/building-weremember-in-public-day-0-why-another-calendar-app-mb4 <p><em>This is the start of a build-in-public series. No code yet. Just the why — because that's where everything starts.</em></p> <h2> I Call Myself an Indie Hacker. But Right Now I'm Sitting in a Lecture Hall. </h2> <p>My bio says "indie hacker swinging through the jungle." The reality is slightly less cinematic: I'm a computer engineering student, and lately my lectures have been covering Django.</p> <p>Something clicked.</p> <p>I'd been turning over a product idea in my head for a while — a privacy-first calendar, built for people who actually care about where their data lives. And suddenly I had a framework I was learning in depth, a real reason to go beyond the tutorial, and a project worth building.</p> <p>So here we are.</p> <h2> The Problem </h2> <p>Google Calendar is the obvious choice for most people. It works, it's everywhere, it's free.</p> <p>But free means your events, your routines, your life, are sitting on someone else's servers. For a lot of people that's a fine tradeoff. For me, it's not.</p> <p>I wanted a calendar that:</p> <ul> <li>Keeps data local — self-hosted, no cloud you didn't choose</li> <li>Works without phoning home</li> <li>Can be owned completely by whoever runs it That app didn't exist in a form I was happy with. So I'm building it.</li> </ul> <h2> Why Django? Why Now? </h2> <p>Timing matters. I'm learning Django properly in university right now — not through a YouTube tutorial I'll abandon, but through structured coursework that's forcing me to understand it at the right depth. It felt wrong not to use that momentum.</p> <p>Django also happens to be a genuinely good fit:</p> <ul> <li>Battle-tested for web apps with auth and data models</li> <li>HTMX + Alpine.js for a fast, interactive frontend without a full JS framework</li> <li>SQLite for self-hosting simplicity, PostgreSQL for the cloud version I'm not picking Django to be clever. I'm picking it because I'm learning it right now and it fits the problem.</li> </ul> <h2> What WeRemember Actually Is </h2> <p><strong>We Remember</strong> (结绳记事 — literally "tying knots to remember") is a privacy-first, self-hostable calendar app.</p> <ul> <li> <strong>No trackers, no Google, data stays local</strong> — self-host it and it never leaves your machine</li> <li> <strong>AGPL licensed</strong> — if you fork it and run it as a service, you open-source it too</li> <li> <strong>Extensible by design</strong> — a plugin system is on the roadmap for the long term The target for now: privacy-conscious self-hosters and European users who live in GDPR culture and are willing to pay for privacy.</li> </ul> <p><em>The repo is live at <a href="https://github.com/OranguStudio/we-remember" rel="noopener noreferrer">github.com/OranguStudio/we-remember</a>. Follow along on X <a href="https://x.com/OranguEngineer" rel="noopener noreferrer">@OranguEngineer</a> or here on dev.to. Day 1 drops when the foundation is solid.</em></p> django buildinpublic privacy webdev