Florian Walther: A Poker Pro’s Approach to Building Engaging Tech Solutions 

@codinginflow‬

A self-taught programmer and content creator. Florian Walther passionately works on indie projects and generously shares knowledge through engaging tutorials and courses on YouTube and social media. Explore the world of programming and content creation with Florian, as he takes us on a journey of creativity, learning, and innovation. 

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Host:
Today on the RH podcast on AI, we have Florian Walther. He's a self-taught programmer and content creator. His YouTube channel is Coding in Flow, where he has over 248,000 subscribers.

How are you doing though?

Florian Walther:
I'm really good, how are you? What time is it over there?

Host:
It's 4:00 PM.

Florian Walther:
Oh, okay. I think it's like 10 AM here, something like that. How's your day going so far?

Host:
Really nice. I finished preparing a tutorial. That's why I was so busy the last week or so because I really had to finish something. I’ve been working on it for like two months, and I had to finally release this video. I promised the sponsor I was working with that I’d release it in August, and I released it just yesterday, on the last day of August. Today I still had to finish up some stuff around that.

Florian Walther:
You're technically still on time, you know? It was the last day of August. I mean, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, but I have to set a line for myself to finally get it done, otherwise, it takes up more and more time.

Host:
What are you drinking, by the way? Coffee?

Florian Walther:
I don't drink coffee. I'm one of those weird people.

Host:
What people don’t know is they don’t want me to drink coffee either. Do you drink any caffeine?

Florian Walther:
This is tea, so whatever is in tea, you can consider that caffeine. I drink yerba mate once a week. That’s my one caffeine day per week.

Host:
Is it that Argentinian tea, yerba mate?

Florian Walther:
Yeah. I only know three people who drink it, and you're the third. It's tastier.

Host:
Is it though? Isn’t it very bitter?

Florian Walther:
No, I really like the taste. I think it's only bitter if you put too hot water in it. You have to cool it down a bit. But there’s also caffeine in it, and I don’t want to get too hooked on caffeine, so I only drink it once a week on Sundays. Because like everybody I know who drinks caffeine is always tired.

Host:
Yeah, the problem is you get used to it, and then you don’t even notice the effects of it anymore. But, you know, they fill it with sugar.

Florian Walther:
Well, I mean, you know, the Starbucks culture where it’s kind of like a hot chocolate thing.

Host:
Yeah, I wouldn't drink that.

Florian Walther:
From where I live, there's like a pumpkin spice latte that comes out around Halloween. It sounds delicious, and apparently, people go crazy for it. They wait all year for it, so marketing is successful for Starbucks.

Host:
Yeah, marketing check. But drinking a lot of calories is a good way to get fat. That's the problem.

Florian Walther:
It’s a fantastic way to get fat. It’s just too easy to consume too much of it. Works every time.

Host:
Well, thanks for taking the time. I know you're busy.

Florian Walther:
Very, very busy person, actually.

Host:
Only sometimes. But it's not a good thing that I’m so busy. It just means I haven’t figured out a lot of stuff here—how to do it more efficiently. I shouldn’t be that busy.

Host:
Ironically, that’s very ironic for a coder, no?

Florian Walther:
Yeah, and also the YouTube stuff is still great. It’s quite the consistent amount of work for a spontaneous amount of pay.

Host:
Yeah, and I’m trying to put out a short, one-minute long video every day. They always have to be prepared in advance.

Florian Walther:
You only put out one a day?

Host:
Yeah, I’ve been doing that for a few months now. Occasionally, I make a longer one. The one I just released is almost 8 hours long, where we build a full project. That's also a lot of work.

Florian Walther:
But realistically, your workload is a lot harder than a lot of people’s workloads because you actually have to put out objective value. A lot of people are putting out their reels—something someone says that's quippy, and they just visualize it. But you’re actually showing people how to do something. You’re giving value with how-to’s. Done, a lot of your out-tos are, they have to be useful because they're coding-based, you know what I mean? Someone just says something funny, they make someone, then they put a B-roll on it, and now that's still real. That's not, it doesn't compare. It doesn't have to make sense as much, or the sense it has to make is at a lower tier. Yeah, but coming up with humor every time is probably also not so easy.

Host: 

It could, you know, the humor, the best kind of humor is spontaneous, right? So coming up with it is really about how funny the guest is.

Florian Walther: 

Yeah, I actually try to add some, I tried to add some more dry humor to my own tutorials at the moment, just to make them a bit more interesting. I'm not really the most extroverted person, but I understand dry humor, you know, a little bit of sarcasm, and it just makes the tutorials more interesting if you say something funny every hour.

Host: 

Also, every hour? Maybe a little bit more frequently in an hour?

Florian Walther: 

Yeah, I try to, but I do it as you said, spontaneously. I don't really prepare that in advance. Just if I can think of something at the top of my head while recording, then I put it in.

Host: 

Do you feel like that people really respond to that when you put the humor in with the coding?

Florian Walther: 

Actually, there's another YouTuber I can tell you about later that does a really good job with that, but he's almost like a Robin Williams style humor, where everything is sort of a reference to something else and slightly absurd, you know?

Host: 

Yeah, but people do react to that. I get comments on these videos when I put some humor in, and they say they like it.

Florian Walther: 

So, are you looking to put more in? Is this the launch of your comedy career?

Host: 

It will probably not be a full career, but I try to put more in, like more humor, because I think it, I just think if you watch a tutorial and it takes several hours, then it's, it probably feels very refreshing from time to time to have a little bit of a laugh in between, instead of just dry coding and technical stuff all the time. There's always a nice mix between learning and humor, if we could... it would be great to have it in something as complex as coding.

Florian Walther: 

Yeah, I remember, I mean, one of the ways I learned history was a book series called Horrible Histories, and they were like really funny. It was like a picturesque kind of book, but it taught you about, like, Roman civilization and Greek civilization. I don't know how hard or easy that would be for coding. Coding doesn't lend itself to that kind of sort of a caricature-ish, um, drawings and representations, but someone can do it, you never know. I mean, there's no limit to human creativity.

Host: 

Yeah, that's also a channel, a big channel, called Fire Ship. I don't know if you know him. He does a good job of adding humor to all his videos, and he combines, like, information and humor in this really nice way, and I think that's part why his videos are viable.

Florian Walther: 

Good for him, you know.

Host: 

Well, you know, I like... so with all this being said, I guess I want to start from the beginning, at least for you, which is sort of why did you and how did you get into coding in the first place? Like, what happened that made you feel like, "We're going to do this"?

Florian Walther: 

So, I didn't study computer science. I studied business economics, actually, in university. But when I was, like, in my early 20s, up to my mid-20s, I was kind of the person who just, I don't know, I had no, I didn't know my ambitions. I didn't really have any ambitions. I just did whatever felt right in the moment. And somehow this changed for me around 24. I don't know if my brain started developing at this time, but only then I started becoming more interested in actually making something out of my life.

Host: 

Yeah.

Florian Walther: And yeah, I studied business economics, and after university, I actually played professional online poker for a few years. This was actually really possible, and I did this for a few years. But I knew that I couldn't keep doing this forever, because it was just, it was obvious that this wouldn't stay profitable forever, just because of the development of this whole poker stuff and, um, technology and bots came in and stuff like that. And also, I started hating it because it was really boring after a while, just clicking buttons all day.

Host: Yeah.

Florian Walther: 

And once you know how to play against recreational players, then there's not so much strategy in there anymore, because you're just playing a blueprint basically most of the time. It's often, a lot of it is just automated in your brain, it's just a habit. So it became so boring that I really started to get depressed by it. Even though I was making money from it by just pressing buttons for eight hours a day or 10 hours or sometimes more, it felt really bad and then I actually sat down and thought about what do I actually want to do in the future – definitely not business economics, the stuff I studied because I just did this to study anything just to be occupied, just to have something to do, you know, at this time. And then I remember that I enjoyed coding as a kid but I didn't really pursue it later when we had it in school. It also came to me easily because I just liked coding, but again, I didn't pursue it in my youth. Then I started teaching myself coding again, but I was already 26 at this time, so one month before I turned 27, I started learning coding again. And then, like only two or three months later, I think I also started my YouTube channel because I thought if I learn the stuff anyway, then I can make videos about it. Maybe I can make up for my bad CV, you know, my bad curriculum vitae, because I could probably can't get a job anywhere if my CV is just three years of online poker and studying something that was completely unrelated. I thought maybe I can make up for this, and yeah, this actually worked. I mean, if you have a YouTube channel or something like that and it grows to a certain size and you make a name for yourself, then this is totally something that impresses potential employers.

And but then eventually, the channel grew. In the beginning, I was doing Android development; now I'm more into web development. But the channel grew pretty quickly with my Android content, and then pretty quickly, to me, it was clear that I maybe can turn this channel into its own business instead of actually applying for a job somewhere, so I did some freelancing instead from time to time and focused a lot of my time on the channel, and that's still what I'm doing right now. The only thing that, yeah, about a year ago or so, I started going more into the web development direction and making content for that. What I didn't expect was that it was almost as if I started over with my channel because I had over 200,000 subscribers by this time, but those were almost exclusively Android devs that aren't that interested in web development stuff. So I thought if I make web dev content, it will just continue getting viewers from the same people, maybe they are interested in the same stuff, but it was almost as if I started from scratch again. But yeah, now I have some momentum again because of the content I have put out by now. But yeah, this was why I started coding. I just, I was 26 and I tried to figure out what I want to do with my life in the future that doesn't make me feel as bad as poker did every day. I'm glad I found back to coding because I really enjoy it, and I really enjoy building projects. It's fun and it's kind of job I think for me right now that I can see the best, the most fun kind of work. Along the way, I also learned the importance of tech support solutions to help others with their coding journeys. With the rise of scalable IT solutions, I’ve seen how businesses can grow rapidly, leveraging the right tech tools. I also began understanding how integrated system solutions can make development projects smoother, and how tech support is critical for troubleshooting and maintaining systems. As I expanded my projects, I also explored cloud-based collaborations, which made working with teams easier, enabling real-time sharing of ideas and resources.

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 Host:
Do you feel like you're motivated more by fun than you are by anything else? Do you see like your income as simply a side effect or necessary side effect of your fun or are you motivated by income?

Florian Walther:

Yeah, this was something that poker showed me that if I make good money it's not enough to make me feel uh good at the end of the day and it kind of sucked to wake up in the morning and really hate what you have to do with the rest of your day and the money didn't really make up for this so this is when I realized that I probably need to have something that I enjoy at least part of the time you know so I do uh put fun on a high importance level high priority because I think if you have fun working then work almost isn't work anymore I mean I don't have fun all the time with the stuff I'm doing right now I don't enjoy editing videos for example in particular but a lot of the time preparing projects I do have fun and it just makes work feel less like work and I think that's very good for. For when you were doing poker um was it was it that lucrative was it would you compare it to YouTube in terms of it's uh I mean 10 hours a day is a long time so lucrative is also a relative term you know if you can if you can't enjoy what. You're making that's no matter what, it's kind of tough to enjoy to have a, you know, to think it's valuable, but is it people think about it a lot as gambling, but can you have consistent income that you can really say, "Okay, I can maybe not buy, uh, I mean, I'm not sure what you can buy with poker income," but, you know, was it really that profitable?

Host: 

I would not recommend anyone to do it anymore because you can't just jump in there, and even if you are good, you will just get robbed of your money basically. It's more about who you know, uh, what people you know. It's a bit difficult to explain. So, I played, I focused on heads-up poker, that's one versus one. And there, you have to imagine it like this: they are basically groups that are forming that are fighting off other players that also would be good enough to be a recreational player. But unless you are in that group, you don't even get to these recreational players because the other ones are basically attacking you, so to speak. They are sitting at your tables and doing this one after another, so they have like this... it's difficult to explain. They have groups, and they share the workload, the battles they have to do, uh, between each other. So, some say like nine people out of this group keep playing the fishes, the recreational players, and one guy of the group is busy fighting you off, sitting you all the time so that you don't get to this recreational player, and you keep losing money. And then after a while, this one player can play the fishes, and another player jumps in and plays you instead. So unless you are in that group, there is no chance you even have, you can even make any money with that. Absolutely no chance. I would not recommend this to anyone because then it's really just gambling.

Florian Walther: 

But yeah, since I started, I have been doing this for a few years. And the first one or two years, I was probably a losing player, or maybe break-even, but then I knew more people and I started getting better, and I started getting into these groups. And then I started getting these recreational players, and yeah, we could make... I was actually not a good player, but because I knew the right people and I got into these groups, I was good enough to beat them. And then it really depends on what group you are in and how high you are allowed to play. Because the fishes on the very low levels, they are just as bad as the fishes on the very high level because recreational players, they don't care about strategy, they are just bad no matter what stake. If you play them for 50 bucks or for 5K bucks, their skill level is the same. But as a bad player, you don't even get into these high stakes, that's the problem.

Host: 

I don't even remember how much money I made with that. It wasn't so... I mean, I wasn't rich, but it was enough to live off of. And then also, while I was preparing, while I was learning programming and building my channel, I also lived off of the savings from poker. That funded this part of my life, basically. So, it was useful.

Florian Walther: 

What is it about you, you feel that many people aren't patient enough to wait for two years to be good at something, to make an impact? And a lot of people would not, you know, regarding poker.

Host: 

Well, I guess poker was the example for it, right? Poker was just like, oh, you could have been anything that you waited for two years to, you know, to be good at. But poker is particular. Some people could say poker is particularly, um, uh, risky in terms of it depends on how you want to think about it, but you could say, "Okay, poker is particularly risky," and this person, you know, waited to be good at poker for two years to make money out of it. You could say that, but it could be anything like a business, it could be YouTube. But the idea is that, like, very few people would wait for two years to be good at something before they make any kind of money. They would most likely go and get a job, like that's what most people would do. So, you kind of parlay that, um, you know, lack of risk diversity into everything you've done so far. You know, and that patience... well, I guess lack of risk-averse... lack of risk aversion, or I don't know if that's the best word for it, but you're able to accept risk, that's the first part. And the second part is you're patient, so you're, you know, you're patient even with the new thing you're doing with the web part. You're saying, "Hey, I'm willing to, I understand it's going to take some time, and I'm willing to wait." You consistently identify that you're patient.

Florian Walther: 

Yeah, I try to be patient. Yeah, I try to do that, but I mean, in the time where. Yeah, I was still learning poker. I did enjoy it. It was only later that it stopped being fun. But when it was still this learning process, I mean, poker – many people play poker for fun normally. It is a fun game. Only if you have to do it all day and always the same moves, then it starts becoming very boring. But in the beginning, I was enjoying it. But I played on and off. I wasn’t really disciplined about it. Sometimes I played for a while and then I really got annoyed by it and then I probably didn’t play for two months or so. I don’t know. I wasn’t very disciplined about it. I just did it from time to time, and then eventually I got into the right groups, as I said, and then I got a little bit better and started earning money from that. But yeah, I want to say again that I don’t recommend anyone to play this because there’s no chance you’re going to be a winning player. Also, when I stopped playing online poker around this time, everyone started using bots, and these bots, they can play a perfect game. You can’t beat these bots. You can only lose against them, and you don’t even get to the recreational players that don’t use the bots because the pro players that use the bots, they know how to protect these lobbies and how to sit you on purpose, you know? Yeah, and regarding patience when it came to coding and my YouTube channel, my YouTube channel actually took off pretty quickly, so I didn’t really need much patience there. I was lucky with that because Android was a really undersaturated topic on YouTube, and it started growing quickly. And I was always getting my dopamine hit from the stats, you know, every day more subscribers and growing a bit faster, so this was not really difficult. But I do try to be patient in general. I mean, there’s no other way really to do the stuff I want to do without being patient. However, one of the things I’ve learned through this process is that patience is key when delivering tech support solutions. You need to take the time to assess situations, which is something I also learned while providing tech support for various projects. Even though I was focused on growing, I also realized that implementing scalable IT solutions is critical for long-term success. Now that I’m more experienced with integrated system solutions, I understand the importance of providing seamless solutions that work well across different systems. It's like when I think about cloud-based collaborations, where multiple people can work together in real-time, the ability to sync, share, and manage everything efficiently without delay is a skill I’ve gained that translates well into my current work.

Host: 

You’d be surprised. It’s not a trait everybody has. It’s not a trait I have. I don’t think so. I’m not a patient person. If it doesn’t happen yesterday, it’s an issue. And I know people who’ll try 10 things at level 0.5 and think that’s like level one, when all you needed was level one for any of those things. And you can spend a day arguing with them about that.

Florian Walther: 

Yeah, I’m not a naturally patient person. Up to my mid-20s, I didn’t really even have any hobbies that I consistently did. You know, because as a kid and in my youth, I was not patient at all. I never stuck with anything. I started different kinds of stuff, sports and so on, and always quit after a few months because I became bored of it. So, I’m not a naturally very patient person. But nowadays, I try to force myself to be more consistent and more patient.

Host: 

You go from not being patient at all to being able to wait for two years on something, right? It’s ridiculous.

Florian Walther: 

Yeah, I mean, I try to sometimes just force myself.

Host: 

So you have better self-control than you think?

Florian Walther: 

I do think I have better self-control now. I also stopped a lot of bad habits that I had in my youth. I used to smoke and drink and all that stuff, and I got rid of all of this one by one. And then definitely… well, if you talk about good habits... I mean, I know you’ve written a lot of material, sorry, have you written a lot of material regarding Android? As you’ve alluded to... what made you pick Android? At least for YouTube, did you do the thing that every business person does and say, “Hey, I’m going to check my market, I’m going to see, you know, which one is less saturated with the most keywords,” you know, Google keywords or something?

Florian Walther: 

Yeah, I like this. This is cool. Well, I… you know, you did talk about, hey, you wanted to get into the industry. So, why pick Android? Let me just start from there. Why pick Android as the tech you wanted to start playing with?

Florian Walther: 

Yeah, I think I—if I remember correctly—I looked at the list of programming languages available, and there were different sections with iOS and Android and web development and so on. And there was Java, and Java had a connection to Android and to game development. And I knew what Java meant. I had heard of it before, and something like Swift UI or Swift was more foreign to me. So, I just thought, “Okay, Java, I know this language. I’ve heard of that. You can make apps, you can make games, and making apps sounds kind of cool.” Then I just picked that, yeah, but in hindsight I should have picked web development, I think, because you can do much more with a website than with a native mobile app.

Host: 

Why do you think so? Is it just the spreadability that makes you feel that way?

Florian Walther: 

Yeah, because every mobile phone and mobile device has an online browser, so unless you need some very device-specific features like camera or GPS, then often you can just use a website instead of an app.

Host: 

That's true. But there are a lot of cool things that you can actually do with technology that needs a camera or GPS, because those are like location and visual information.

Florian Walther: 

The problem with mobile apps, also with native apps, is that if you know how to do native Android development, then you can't make apps for iOS. You know, that's a bit annoying.

Host: 

True, that's true. A lot of people use Fluttering, or they used to react in it, but like with most things, React... the ecosystem is fractured to the point where it's like, do you spend more time looking for solutions than you do implementing them, which can sometimes be a pain for a lot of people.

Florian Walther: 

Yeah, Flutter seems really interesting, but I haven't tried it. Maybe one day, maybe you'll get to try it after people see how good your course is on web development, you can try to do something with Flutter and see what they say, you know? Go back and forth, re-enter the market.

Host: 

Yeah, I do get requests for Flutter tests from time to time.

Florian Walther: 

Why not? So, could you let's go all the way to the test question, I think, which is: What would you consider the best architecture for Android applications? How do you really think about that? I mean, the most popular one when I was making tutorials was usually MVVM, and this is just what I stuck to. But when I made Android tutorials, one of the mistakes I made... So, I'm completely self-taught, right? I just started teaching myself. And when I made these Android tutorials, I focused a lot on single topics, isolated topics, rather than building tech solutions for complete projects. So, I made tutorials like how to build notifications, and then I read all the documentation and all the source code of notifications, and I made a tutorial only around this topic. I didn't focus enough on building tech solutions that would connect various components and concepts together. Only when I switched to web development did I focus more on building projects and everything that's involved in that. That's why I make mostly project-based tutorials on my YouTube channel now, but on Android, because of the way I approached this, I didn't have so much experience with different architectures and how they relate to each other. So, I really only used MVVM, basically, or what I understood as MVVM. But I can't really compare it.

Host: 

Fair enough. I think, you know, at the same time, building those little pieces inadvertently are kind of like great ways for people to see your content because that's what people are looking for when they... They're not looking for a whole... It's really popular. Even when I am looking for education on how to do something, it's like these little pieces: how to do notifications, how to do models, like these sort of external extra pieces that, you know, like page-independent solutions on the web side, or there's different ways you can call it a feature of a website as opposed to the features of the product. That's what most people are searching for when you're looking online, and so that's a great way to get people to see your content.

Florian Walther: 

Yeah, but I focused too much on that, and then in around 2020 or so, that's about two years, two and a half years after I started my channel, after making these videos for over two years, I realized, wait, I can't even build a simple app right now because I didn't really learn that. I just focused on all these little stuff, and I thought just like a puzzle, these little pieces would add up and teach me how to build a full app just by knowing how to build a single piece, but it didn't work like that. You have to actually build full projects in order to learn how to do it. Then after two years, I couldn't build it.

Host: 

Yeah, I mean, Android development is notoriously difficult because of... you have some constraints in these devices that make it more difficult. For example, when you rotate an Android device and it rotates the screen, then the whole screen... the whole... yeah, the whole thing...

Florian Walther: 

You see on the screen in memory gets basically destroyed and deleted and recreated from scratch. So you can't put your data in there because it will get lost when I build a React app, I can just do my or put my data directly into my components and it's very straightforward and easy to understand. But in Android, you can't do that because it gets lost when you rotate the screen or when you change the font size for example on the device. All these configuration changes actually destroy the screen that you see on the phone, and for this reason, you need these kinds of architectures like MVVM, where you have to put your data somewhere else, even to get the most simple to-do list apps working. Then you also have memory constraints. I think you can't even load a big image into an Android phone, at least not in the older ones a few years ago, without getting a memory error. And you have all these little constraints that you have to work around. So Android is definitely more complicated I think than something like React. Okay, React has its own difficulties, but it was definitely not easier building an Android app. But once you know how it works, then you get it and then you can build upon that.

Host: 

What was it like building out a course for people to learn this after you sort of move all these pieces together? You built them yourself, you showed that you've built them, and I would assume at that point you also had at least built a simple project with some architecture and then think to yourself, "Hey, I need to turn this into an opportunity for other people to learn." What was that process like, writing a book and writing tutorials and just writing that kind of content?

Florian Walther: 

Yeah, back in the Android days, I mean I made one course when I was in Android development and one course when I did web development. And the web dev one was much more natural to make because I made this course after I actually built a few projects and actually deployed them to production. For example, I have the site project called tohub.io, which is a website that I've built, and I took the knowledge I learned by building these projects and turned them into a course. This felt much more natural, much more... yeah, much more natural. Android, because of the way I approached learning, I had to force this. I had to, uh, I don't know, learn how to build the project while I was making the course. So, in hindsight, maybe the course was a bit too simple. And yeah, but I don't know what year this was, 2021 maybe. By then, I knew how to build Android apps but I liked the course. I liked the React course more. It's also much bigger and longer with more features than the Android one because by then I actually knew how to build stuff.

Host: 

What made you choose React?

Florian Walther: 

What made me choose React? Well, web development first, right? What made you think that, "Hey, this is where I want to go now"? Was it the same thing you did before, where you were just interested and you thought, "Hey, Android is boring for me now, I'm too good at it and I want to branch out?" Yeah, the thing is, I mean, I got really... there was a time when I really didn't want to make Android tutorials anymore, but this was also because I didn't really find the correct approach for me to make these tutorials and enjoy the process. Similar to how we talked about poker earlier. Then I, uh, there was a time when I wanted to stop making tutorials on YouTube altogether because I thought, "I have done this for a few years, I don't want to keep doing this, it's so annoying and I hate it." And then I became really interested in Indie hacking, where you build your own little startup basically, but not with funding and with a huge team, just by yourself or maybe with a co-founder. And this is why I became interested in web development because the stuff I wanted to build... the first idea I had was a Chrome extension, which requires me to know JavaScript and web stuff. And then the next idea was this two-type website I was talking about, which is still online. And this is why I learned web development because all the ideas I had were websites and not mobile apps. That's also why I'm saying that in hindsight, I think learning web dev is more useful in general because you can build cool stuff with that. And this made me switch to web development, and then I built these projects for several months and only focused on that, building tech support solutions that allowed me to experiment with new concepts and ideas.

Then I realized, bro, wow, I learned so much in the process that I might as well just turn this into tutorials for YouTube again. And then I found a better approach for me to make these YouTube tutorials and this content without hating my life by approaching it a bit differently by, yeah, now I'm basically building scalable IT solutions for YouTube, and I work on my own side projects. And from the stuff I learn while doing these projects, I create my shorts and my YouTube tutorials and so on. But before I did that on Android, the direction was the opposite. I first thought what the way I want to make a tutorial about, and then I was learning this particular topic, and this felt more like doing homework, you know? Because you know, okay, now I have to learn everything about this topic to make a video about that. But now it's the opposite. Now I'm building stuff, I'm having fun, and in the process, because I enjoy building integrated system solutions like websites and apps, and just as a side effect, I learn a lot of stuff which I can then repurpose into creating content. You know, it's much more natural process and much more fun for me. And that's why I've been able to put out so much content in the last few months without hating my life as I used to on Android. It's like the process now is fueled by my curiosity and enjoyment, not by deadlines and constraints, which is a huge change for me.

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Host: 

Yeah, I'm happy that you're finding like a process. It's always good to have a process that a lot of things when it comes to like, you know, doing anything really, but especially when you're trying to be productive in the market is how do you get a process that is fun? If you have employees, it's fun for your employees, like that's super important, where they enjoy their life and they're enjoying themselves. That you're enjoying yourself, everyone's having a good time, we're getting it done, but we're having a good time. That's super. If you can, if you're lucky, and, you know, if you don't work, it don't wait.

Florian Walther: 

Yeah, I think for content creation, you have to find a way to enjoy the process. It's such a grind and you have to keep outputting more and more content. And if you, if it feels like hard work for you, then you will stop eventually. This is why there are so many content creators who make videos about their burnouts because they just don't want to do it anymore. So I was always really interested in finding a way to approach this where I can make it as much fun as possible. And I found a way to do that.

Host: 

Do you feel like you're kind of person that needs a creative outlet?

Florian Walther: 

Yeah, I think so. And I also, I also always need my own thing to work on, you know?

Host: 

Did you feel like, I'm asking this specifically because I'm sort of going into editing, and why you feel like editing?

Florian Walther: 

Well, I think every, I don't know. I feel like I don't like editing either to some degree, but I only don't like it because it takes time. But, and because I have other things that I have to do, and because, because it's engineering related. Engineering takes time. So I have like two things that take a lot of time. One is about being creative and one is also about being creative, but in a different way. So it's like, it just becomes very stressful, but you're doing that all the time. So how do you deal with that? And like, did you ever find... is that, you know, what's your reason? How do you feel about editing, whether you like it or you don't like it? So, like, you know what I mean? Because that, my, that's my Matrix, and why I feel the way I feel, what's your Matrix? But when it comes to building tech solutions, it can also feel like you're constantly making decisions about time and priorities, which gets stressful too.

Yeah, editing can, I mean, it can be fun. The problem is that the... I mean, the tutorials I make for YouTube, like the last one, for example, is eight hours long, and it takes so much time to go through that and cut and cut. I mean, I have literally a pain in my left forearm right now from all the hotkeys I had to press on my keyboard. It's hurting right now, and it's just too much. It's just too much editing I have to do. I have to do with all these shorts and so on. The editing is something that most YouTubers outsource, but I can't. The problem is I really, this is a problem I really had in my head for the last two months. I can't see myself outsourcing my tutorial editing because I do corrections while editing. Sometimes I notice, okay, I edited the wrong word here, I have to clarify this with some text on the screen. And if I outsource editing, then all of this is gone. I can't do this step anymore. So I feel like I have to edit myself or I have to accept that the quality is like 10 or 20% lower. That's something really difficult for me right now. I'm also a bit of a control freak in this regard, and I'm scared that the editor will mess up, you know, and ruin my eight-hour-long tutorial because he edited something wrong somewhere. I'm a bit paranoid about it. But yeah, I just have too much editing to do, and this is why I don't enjoy it. But it's also important to consider how much time you're spending on things when you're building tech solutions, especially when you can see room for improvement but need to make choices based on deadlines.

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Host: 

Well, after the podcast, I can tell you some things I do, and we'll see. Maybe that's something you may use, may not use, but maybe...Maybe we'll see, but, you know, having pain in your wrist, you gotta fix that.

Florian Walther: 

Yeah, I mean, it would go away in a few days, but you need your arms and legs, they're essential.

Host: 

I mean, optimally, I would just prepare the tutorials, record them, and have someone edit them. But I have to find a way to do that where I feel comfortable with it.

Host: 

What's your favorite thing about building with websites? Like, is it the abstractions or the level of access? Because I think coders are in two camps to some degree.

Florian Walther: 

Uh, there are, well, computer people in the computer science space are in two camps, and then you can correct me if you think that it's a little different. There's the people who like computations, so they like abstraction, they like math, they like the fact that they can make everything that used to be a wild loop into reduce or something like that. They like playing their games, so just playing with transforms, basically doing transformations, and they love the I/O pipeline. Sometimes they like DevOps, infrastructure stuff, and just setting all that up. One of the key components of building tech solutions for such people is automation, so they get a real sense of satisfaction when systems run smoothly with minimal human intervention.

I think there are different stages, so in software where, um, you know, at one point you're playing with Linux kernels all the time, and you just like setting it up, and almost the fact that it breaks all the time is why it's fun, because you get to redo it again or something. There's something about that, and after some time, you're like, "I don't have time for this," then you go into different stages. But I think that type of person kind of just likes computation. They thrive on the process of building tech solutions that solve problems in abstract ways.

Then there's a person who likes to see cool things happen, and coding is a way that they can make that happen. They're motivated completely by the fact that at the end of this, something cool is going to get made. Those people usually are the ones that end up in, you know, starting a company or something like that early, whether they're successful or not, or at least are a startup and like start massaging the same product over and over again if they believe in the product.

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Host: 

Which one are you?

Florian Walther: 

Yeah, definitely the second one that you mentioned, the people who actually want to build stuff and put stuff on the screen and see it work. I mean, that's the coolest part about it. I'm not so much interested in the nitty-gritty details and all the technical stuff. Yeah, I think that's more the people who want to work a job as a programmer rather than building their own projects. But for me, building my own project, this is so intrinsically rewarding and motivating. I really enjoy this a lot.

But, the only things that make me money right now are actually my content. So, I mean, Tab is making a little bit of money, but it's only monetized with affiliate links, and affiliate links don't make a lot of money. And I'm working on another project right now, which is a journaling app with AI integration. And this has no, I haven't added any monetization there yet. I don't know how difficult it is to actually build a SaaS product that makes money. It's probably quite difficult. But yeah, but even if it doesn't make money, just building these projects is already a lot of fun for me. I really enjoy this. However, even when it comes to the technical side, I think a lot about tech support solutions. It’s essential to be able to troubleshoot and handle technical problems efficiently, especially when scaling up projects. For example, I’ve been looking into scalable IT solutions to ensure that my journaling app can grow smoothly as more users join. Building a strong foundation with integrated system solutions is key to making sure that different systems work together without any issues, something I’m learning as I go. And when it comes to collaboration with other developers or getting help, tech support plays a big role in ensuring everything runs without hiccups. It’s also important to consider cloud-based collaborations, especially with remote teams, to make real-time editing and sharing of resources as seamless as possible.

Host: 

Do you talk about your SaaS product? Can you talk about it a little bit more? What’s the idea? What made you want to do it?

Florian Walther: 

Uh, I know you did the Indie Hacker thing in terms of just looking at the website and seeing what's possible, but why did you choose this sort of niche?

Yeah, so I basically have two projects right now. One is called Tab.io. It's a tool where people submit links to programming tutorials and courses, and they add their metadata, like, "Is it a paid course? What's the difficulty level? What topics is it about?" And it's basically like a database where people can then up and downvote different resources. And the idea is that you always find the best tutorial on a certain topic. So, if you want to learn JavaScript, you find this list, like on Stack Overflow, where the best entry is voted to the top. You know, this was just an idea I had.

And the other project I'm building right now is called Smart Diary. I bought the Z domain because the Z domain costed three bucks, and the domain "Bost" cost three. So, I feel like, uh, I mean, all these, like the game of domain buying is hot. It's still hot, it's been hot for like 40 years. It looks like there's people who are willing to scoop up every variation of the domain you actually want for your product. I mean, I'm surprised that even the SmartDi.com domain is available. I mean, it's just expensive right now, but three and one-twelve K for the domain is not that much if the product is successful.

It's a nice domain, smart diary sounds exactly like what it does. So right now it's the .zo domain, and I mean, I have been playing... I'm really intrigued by all the ChatGPT stuff, and I have been playing around with the API for a while now. I just thought, what could I build with it? And I think this is actually a really cool idea. It's, yeah, it's basically a journaling app where you write diary entries. I'm using it myself and I enjoy using it, which is always a good sign, you know. And what it basically does is, so you can write the journal entry, but instead of writing the whole thing, you only add some notes like bullet points of what you did today. Then you click a button, and it turns this into a whole diary entry just like ChatGPT would do it. Then you save it, you get a summary again of this entry, so you can glance over it. And then I added chat features where you can chat with the AI about your diary entries, either about a single entry or about a whole week or a whole month. And you can ask it, "Hey, what did I achieve this week?" or "What would you improve?" Or some people, they just want to talk about their problems with the AI, and it's still a relatively new project because I didn't have so much time to put into it the last few weeks. But now I want to focus on this more, and I actually think that this is a really cool idea because I use it myself, I find it useful. But, as you mentioned earlier, I don't approach my projects like you should technically do. I didn't think about the market there and all this kind of stuff because I always have in the back of my head that I also want to turn this content, this tech stuff, into content later. So I always think about what is a cool combination of tools and technology that I could use that also interests other people, and then I try to put this into one idea. And like this AI diary app is something that, on the one hand, is a cool product idea, but on the other hand, I could turn this into a nice tutorial in the future and teach how to use this stuff because it's new technology, it's really interesting. So even if the app itself doesn't make any money, it's still useful for me because I can turn it into content. So I always try to kill two birds with one stone in this regard.

Host: 

One thing that would be good for is psychologists or therapists as a tool for their clients, like you know what I mean? Where, you know, psychologists or therapists who ask you to journal and use this as a way of self-reflection to some degree. You know what I mean? And even if the AI is wrong, it's a good way... You know, do you disagree with the summary in a way, and then it initiates, it's sort of like people have a tendency to want to distance themselves from themselves, so this is a way to reintroduce yourself to yourself from a psychological perspective, you know? And then, you know, if you disagree, then you go figure it out, and then you talk to the therapist about it or whatever. But it's like another entry point into, like, you know, being self-actualized. That's a little bit... if you like playing that way, fine, like it's fun to play with, you know? But it's also efficient, right? That's like, okay... And then you can also... the therapist can actually have a standard form that they say you should ask about yourself for the week, you know what I mean? And, you know, if the AI can answer all these questions in a particular way, and then that... or not, or, you know, there's all kinds of things you can do with it. But I think that there's a whole... there's definitely a therapist angle going on in the world right now, and, you know, I think that market would love the idea. Well, I mean, it depends on how they treat it, who knows, right? But I think that whole market will eat this up really, really, really... if you can get the right person behind it, that whole market will eat it up.

When it comes to building tech support solutions for therapy and self-reflection, the possibilities are endless. This AI-powered tool could be a part of the larger trend of building scalable IT solutions to address mental health and wellness in more interactive and personal ways. If the technology is embraced properly, it could provide valuable integrated system solutions to both clients and therapists, opening new avenues for engagement and self-awareness. There's a lot of promise here, especially as the demand for tech support and cloud-based collaborations in therapeutic contexts continues to grow.

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Florian Walther: 

Yeah, I think a lot of people actually also really enjoy talking to AI. This is why all these AI girlfriend apps and so on are really popular right now. I actually heard somewhere that there were people who actually killed themselves because the AI girlfriend got an update and their personality changed, and they actually committed. Maybe it's a suicide story. I don't know if it's true, but it sounds exactly like what would happen. I don’t remember where I heard it from, but I thought it was a credible source. I heard it in some podcast.

Host: 

Yeah, that's interesting.

Florian Walther: 

I think the number one creator on these pay-to-experience sites, the most popular one, is actually a digital model.

Host: 

That's not surprising. She never ages.

Florian Walther: Exactly. But let's go back to tech a little bit. I think this will be my last question. I've been playing with Next.js and had my own perspective on it. Could you tell me what you think about it, and this new hybrid server-side client-side model for building web applications? How valuable do you think this abstraction is, and where do you think it's going?

Host: 

Yeah, Next.js seems to be all about getting stuff to work very quickly, which I really like. Since I'm doing this indie hacking, adding features quickly without a lot of hassle and complications is really nice for me. I don't know how it is when you work on large projects at big companies, though. It's usually not that easy. But I really like the latest developments in Next.js, and server components make it so easy. With server components, I can just fetch data and don't have to make a request to a server. I can access the database directly in my component. Server actions are basically the counterpart for POST requests, so now even if I want to send something to my server, I don't have to set up an endpoint—I can just call a function and that's it. It feels so intuitive and fast. I really like it. The caching part trips a lot of people up because it can be a bit complicated how the data is cached and what is actually rendered on the server and the client. But I found that for my projects, I was able to figure everything out, and I think I used the server render parts and the client render parts pretty intelligently in a way that's useful. I really like it so far. But again, I'm working only on my own projects, which are fairly small. I don't know how it is when you work on a very large project. Then, it might not be so much roses and sunshine.

Florian Walther: 

Yeah, well, you never know. Maybe one of your projects won’t be so small in the future, and you'll get to experience the growing pains of Next.js. If you're lucky.

Host: 

Yeah, I hope so. Thanks for joining. I really appreciate it. It's been a great conversation. Where can people find you if they want to check out your work? I know you have a lot of courses and your YouTube channel.

Florian Walther: 

Yeah, the best entry point is probably my YouTube channel, which is called Coding in Flow. That's the name I came up with. I started the channel because I read this book about the flow state. Do you know about the flow state?

Host: 

Yeah, it's when you're so focused on something that time just flies by, and you're really into it.

Florian Walther: 

Exactly. I was really into this positive psychology stuff around the time I started coding. I wanted to find more fun and happiness, you know? So I was reading these books and thought coding is the perfect flow activity. You can focus on it so much, and time just flies by. That’s how I came up with the name Coding in Flow. The funny coincidence is that "Flow" (F-L-W) are also my initials because my name is Florian Walther. So that's a cool coincidence. You can check out the YouTube channel, and from there, you'll usually find the rest of my work, like codinginflow.com, where all the links are.

Host: 

That's great. What about your projects? Are they all live?

Florian Walther: 

Yeah, one is 2.io, but it's not really that useful to open the website and use it directly. I get traffic to the website through programmatic SEO pages. For example, people might Google "best Flutter tutorials" and end up on a page with a list of those tutorials. But going directly to the front page and using it like that is not very useful.

Host: 

Got it.

Florian Walther: 

Yeah, I mean, some people use it like that. And the other one I'm building right now is Smart Diary. I can't afford the .com domain yet, so it’s start—

Host: 

Well, whoever is listening, if you can sign up as much as possible, Florian can afford the domain. He's tired of it.

Florian Walther: 

Yeah, it's free right now, but in the future, I want to add some additional features.

Host: 

That explains a lot. Well, thanks again for coming on. I really appreciate it.

Florian Walther: 

Yeah, it was fun.

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