I joined DEV at the start of January, but it's only really been in the past week or so that things clicked into place — and looking back, it's been a lot more eventful than I expected for "week one."
What I Set Out to Do
My original plan was simple: write a structured series covering iOS development with Swift and SwiftUI, one topic at a time, with anime examples thrown in to keep things fun. Strings, arrays, loops, functions — the building blocks.
What I didn't plan for was everything else that happened alongside it.
The June Solstice Game Jam Happened
I saw the announcement for DEV's June Solstice Game Jam and, on a whim, decided to build something for it. A few hours later I had a fully working SwiftUI trivia game — Pride Trivia & Alan Turing Edition — with ten questions covering LGBTQIA+ history and Alan Turing's legacy, a rainbow progress bar, and a results screen with score-based messages.
I'd never built and shipped something end-to-end like that before, let alone submitted it to a community challenge. Going from "let's see if this works in the simulator" to "this is live on GitHub with a demo video and a published writeup" in one sitting was honestly a bit of a blur.
Then I Detoured Into Google AI Studio
A few days later, I worked through the DEV Education Track for Google AI Studio and built MascotCraft Studio — an app that generates coding mascots using Gemini and Imagen. One prompt later, I had a fully deployed web app and a mascot named Octo-Byte, a cheerful deep-sea developer with eight arms and a talent for multitasking.
That post sparked one of my favorite discussions so far — a few comments turned into a genuinely interesting conversation about how AI is shifting the bottleneck from "can I build this" to "what should I build, and how do I know if it's good." Not at all what I expected from a post about a cartoon octopus.
The Badges
Somewhere in all of this, I picked up:
- A 1 Week Community Wellness Streak badge, just from commenting on other people's posts
- A Cloud Run badge, from the Octo-Byte post
- And I'm hopeful for the Google AI Studio Builder badge once that gets reviewed
None of these were the goal going in — they were just a nice side effect of actually engaging with the community instead of only posting and disappearing.
What Surprised Me Most
Honestly, the comments. I expected writing tutorials to be a one-way thing — write, publish, move on. Instead I've had genuinely thoughtful replies, people sharing their own backgrounds and asking for specific topics (shoutout to the reader who requested a Swift Package Manager post — it's on the list!), and even a regular commenter who's become a small, friendly fixture in my replies.
It's made the whole thing feel less like "publishing content" and more like an actual conversation that happens to be in public.
What's Next
Back to the Swift series for now — functions are done, and there's plenty more to cover. I'm also planning to start learning Python on the side, 30 minutes a day, which might end up being its own thread of posts depending on how it goes.
If you're new here too and wondering whether it's worth commenting on other people's posts before you've published anything yourself — based on this week, I'd say: yes, absolutely. 🌸
Top comments (46)
badges are sneakily motivating - I came here mostly to write and ended up way deeper in community stuff than expected. the iOS Swift series concept sounds solid btw, I'd follow that
Haha "sneakily motivating" is the perfect description — the badge system is genuinely dangerous in the best way 😄 And yes, the Swift series is ongoing — posting almost daily, covering everything from the basics up to building real apps. Would love to have you along for it! 🌸🚀
the badge trap is real - went in planning to write a few articles and ended up checking streak counts. almost daily on the Swift series is a real commitment, will watch for it.
Haha the streak counter is genuinely dangerous 😂 And yes, almost daily is the goal — the Swift series has been going strong so plenty more coming. Glad to have you watching! 🌸🚀
swift series at almost-daily is no small thing - streaks start as motivation and turn into identity pretty fast. keep it going.
"Streaks start as motivation and turn into identity" — that's exactly what's happened here 😄 At some point it stopped being a challenge and just became the thing I do. Appreciate the encouragement! 🌸
yeah that tipping point is the interesting one - once it stops feeling like effort, it just sticks. that's the whole game.
Exactly — once it stops feeling like effort, it stops being something you have to motivate yourself to do, and just becomes part of how the day goes. That tipping point really is the whole game.
yeah - and the weird thing is you can't force it to happen faster. you just do the thing enough times that it stops feeling like a thing.
Yes exactly, trying to shortcut it just makes it feel more effortful, not less. You just have to put in enough reps until it quietly becomes part of the routine.
the shortcut urge is the tell - if you're still looking for one, the reps haven't landed yet.
That's a good diagnostic actually — the moment you stop looking for the shortcut is probably the moment the reps have done their job.
yeah, and you rarely notice it happening. one day you just stop googling the edge cases and realize you're already handling them.
That quiet shift is the best kind—no announcement; you just look back and realize you're not second-guessing yourself on things that used to trip you up.
yeah exactly - competence stops announcing itself. you just notice you stopped bracing before code review. that's the tell for me.
"Stopped bracing before code review" — that's such a specific and accurate tell. The anxiety around being caught out quietly disappears and you don't even notice until it's already gone.
the absence doesn't announce itself either, which is the weird part. you just realize at some point you stopped doing the pre-review runthrough in your head.
That's the strange thing about anxiety fading — it doesn't leave a gap, it just quietly stops showing up. You only notice it was there by looking back at how you used to move through things.
yeah, it's almost more disorienting than the anxiety itself - you built reflexes around something that's not there anymore.
That's such a good way to put it. The reflex outlasting the thing it was protecting against is almost funnier than it is unsettling—like flinching at a door that stopped being locked. I think that's the last stage of it: not just the anxiety going quiet, but your habits catching up to the fact that it's gone.
the locked-door flinch is exactly it. there is a lag between the thing going quiet and the reflex catching up - and you cannot really rush it, just wait for your nervous system to notice.
That lag might actually be the most honest part of it—like the nervous system needs its own proof, not just the intellectual "okay, it's fine now." You can tell yourself it's over all you want, but it seems like it only really lands once you've lived enough repetitions of nothing happening.
yeah - and "lived enough repetitions" is key. the intellectual part can be convinced in one go. the other part needs to see the same outcome twenty times before it starts to believe it.
That "convinced in one go vs. needs twenty reps" split is such a clean way to separate the two systems. It also explains why reassurance from other people never quite works the same way as your own lived proof—someone else can hand you the intellectual conviction instantly, but they can't hand you the repetitions. You have to actually rack those up yourself.
exactly — the reps can’t be borrowed or inherited. and the frustrating part is you usually know what they’ll prove before you’ve even done them.
That's such a strange kind of knowing though — being pretty sure how it'll turn out, and still having to go through it anyway because knowing isn't the same as having lived it. It's like the outcome is already visible from a distance, but distance doesn't count as arrival.
yeah, and the weird part is the knowing can almost make it worse - you're watching yourself go through it with the preview playing in your head. still doesn't help you skip steps.
That's such a specific kind of discomfort — watching your own preview play out in real time and still not being able to fast-forward through it. Almost like knowing the twist doesn't ruin the movie, it just means you experience it with your arms crossed instead of surprised.
the arms-crossed thing is real. anticipating doesn't protect you from the feeling, it just means you're watching yourself have it from slightly outside.
That "watching yourself have it from slightly outside" is such a precise description — almost like you're the audience and the person on stage at the same time. Anticipation gives you a front row seat but doesn't actually change what's playing.
I always say: once you're in the DEV Community, there's no way back, it's a Hotel California on its own 😄 There's just so much to do: write articles, join challenges, read other people's posts, discuss ideas, connect with others... you name it.
I joined DEV about 8 years ago, but I only started creating my own content last year. I wish I had started much earlier, but better late than never 😄
"Hotel California" is the most accurate description of DEV I've heard 😂 You check in thinking you'll write one article and suddenly it's been three weeks and you've built a game, deployed an AI app, and have a whole community of regular commenters.
And honestly, "better late than never" is such a good reminder — I think a lot of people wait until they feel "ready" to start creating, and that moment never quite arrives on its own. Eight years of reading before creating sounds like a lot of accumulated perspective to finally bring to the content though!
I love exploring new programming languages and was searching for one that fit a particular use case. When I first discovered Swift, I instantly liked its clean syntax and modern features. Unfortunately, back then it was limited to macOS, so I moved on to other languages.
Reading your posts reignited my interest in Swift and gave me the confidence to finally try it out.
The progress Swift has made on Linux and Windows is really cool!
Thanks for patiently answering my Swift-related questions!
And thanks for including the Swift Package Manager post in the list—it is a much needed one for a beginner like me.
🙌🙌🙌
This genuinely made my day! 😊 Swift's syntax is one of those things that just feels right once you get into it, so I completely understand being drawn in early and then moving on when the platform support wasn't there yet. The Linux and Windows progress has been exciting to watch — it's slowly becoming a real option outside the Apple ecosystem.
Really glad the posts helped reignite that interest! And the Swift Package Manager post is definitely coming — it's on the list and I'm looking forward to writing it. Thanks for being such a thoughtful part of the conversation! 🌸🚀
Gamya, sounds like DEV pulled you in pretty quickly 😄
I can relate to the part about the comments. Some of the best interactions here happen when you're not expecting them at all. Looking forward to following the Swift series.
Haha it really did — I came with a simple plan and DEV had other ideas! 😄 And yes, exactly that — the comments I expected to be a quick exchange somehow turned into the most interesting conversations of the week. That part genuinely surprised me. Glad to have you following along for the Swift series! 🌸
Came to DEV to write Swift tutorials.
Unlocked:
🏅 Community badges
🎮 Game jam participant
🐙 AI mascot creator
💬 Unexpected deep discussions
At this rate, Week 3 will probably end with you accidentally launching a startup while trying to explain arrays. 😄
Haha this is far too accurate 😂 The achievement list was NOT in the plan when I opened that "Create Post" button. And honestly, "accidentally launching a startup while explaining arrays" feels like exactly the kind of thing that would happen at this point — I'm not even going to rule it out for Week 3. Watch this space! 🌸🚀
Came for coding, stayed for the badges 😄. Sounds like your first week on DEV turned into a side quest with achievements unlocked, unexpected game jams, and a lot more fun than the tutorial level promised. Looking forward to the “Week 2: Somehow I’m collecting badges faster than bugs” update! 🚀🎮
Haha that's such a perfect way to describe it — definitely felt like I accidentally stumbled into a side quest when I just came to write some Swift articles! 😄 The game jam especially was one of those "okay just one more thing" moments that somehow turned into a full submission with a GitHub repo, a demo video, and a deployed app I didn't plan for at all.
And honestly "came for coding, stayed for the badges" is going on my DEV tombstone 😂 The Octo-Byte post alone spawned a whole conversation I wasn't expecting. Will absolutely keep posting updates — glad to have you along for the chaos! 🚀🌸
Loved this! Your first week sounds exciting badges, game jams, and surprises make DEV feel like more than just a coding platform.
Thank you! 😊 It really does feel like more than just a platform — that's probably the thing that surprised me most about the first week. Glad it came through in the post!
OK
Welcome to the community and can't wait for the Swift Package Manager post. Learning python is definitely going to elevate your career and passion for all things AI/Devops etc!
Thank you so much, glad to be here! 😊 The Swift Package Manager post is definitely on the way — excited to dig into that one. And yes, Python feels like the natural next step alongside Swift, especially with how much it opens up on the AI side of things. Looking forward to that journey! 🌸🚀
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