It finally happened.

Plus more milestones to come.

And no major AI updates?

Topics for this week:

• Android Live

• Programming Lite

• The YouTube Dream

• Cheap Hosting

• No More No-Code

Android Live

I can finally link it!

Wave has made it to the Google Play Store:

Obviously work isn’t done with Wave, we’re on to the next features and bug fixes, but it’s officially available on both mobile platforms.

I started developing in React Native back in December with the intent of cross compiling to iOS and Android and now it’s paid off.

And with surprisingly little extra work.

Nearly everything already developed for iOS worked as expected on Android, which is the entire goal of React Native.

There were a few issues but nothing major.

Mostly having to do with fonts and text for some reason.

The custom font didn’t load on Android with the first new build Android after a few months of working exclusively on the iOS side of things so I had to refactor the styling for Android specifically because iOS worked perfectly fine.

Some of the “KeyboardAware” functionality that happens when you press into a place where you need to type didn’t always display correctly on Android either - specifically the keyboard would cover the bottom of the place you were typing.

Still usable but visually annoying.

And the last obvious one didn’t seem to show up until the app was already live.

Text on the main screen was being cut off or not displaying at all for some reason, and only seemed to happen with a fresh install.

After navigating around, this issue would go away on it’s own, but not a great first impression when opening the app.

Super weird it would only effect the last word in the Text component also.

Must have been a word wrap bug or something.

Undoubtedly the downside of translating code to two different operating systems.

But a little AI tweaking and GPT had figured out a working solution.

Luckily the Google Play Store approval process is much faster than the App Store.

Once I had the issue fixed, I was able to create a new release, submit it, and it was approved in about 15 minutes, then took about an hour to roll out.

No waiting 7 hours overnight like the App Store.

That means going forward, new versions will still probably start with iOS first then Android second since iOS will take longer to go live.

But that also means that the app is live on 2 platforms!

Weird to say at this point.

It’s taken a while but it’s finally happened.

Let me know if you end up checking out Wave on Android!

Programming Lite

I’ve been spending a good amount of time connecting n8n to the CRM Monday.com recently and it’s shown me that “No-Code” is a great marketing term, but maybe not the most realistic.

In this particular case I’ve been frustrated because it doesn’t seem like the integration between these two platforms is fully baked.

There’s been at least 3 different instances where I wanted to have n8n do something with Monday.com but it didn’t have the option.

Upload a file? Call the API directly. Pull the public url for an image? Call the API directly. Create a Subitem? Call the API directly.

The Subitem situation was really frustrating because the option shows up in the menu, but fails with an error when trying to use it - the method just plain hasn’t been implemented yet.

Running into things like this too often makes me start to question why I’m using a “No-Code” platform in the first place.

I’ve now added an extra layer of abstraction to a process that I could have otherwise vibe-coded in a couple hours.

I’m not writing the code directly, but I’m still thinking about all of these workflows and platform integrations in terms of code, and then having to translate that into the quirky way that n8n handles coding concepts with nodes.

Without a technical background, I could see how you would get lost very quickly.

Jumping into n8n, you expect to drag and drop your way into an automated business in a few hours, but instead spend a few hours trying to figure out how to upload a PDF to your CRM.

Lots of room for improvement for sure, and things like MCP should help AI make these integrations super smooth and human-intervention free, but for now, things are still not as easy as they appear.

I’m a generally optimistic person, but “No-Code” may be a little too optimistic.

On the bright side, that does mean plenty of opportunity to keep making YouTube videos about these very problems!

The YouTube Dream

I think this dream is still alive for way too many people.

Ideas and expectations don’t seem to go away even if the world has changed.

Just turn on your camera, talk about something, and you’ll make money.

Going into YouTube with that expectation is a good way to burnout and quit because everyone else is trying to do the same thing.

Everyone wants to show and talk about themselves and be rewarded with money and followers.

But unfortunately those days are gone.

Takes a lot more effort and consistency to see some return.

It takes a long time to even get to the point of monetizing the channel alone.

And on top of that, there’s no guarantee monetization will be a significant amount.

Plus people’s watching habits are maybe not the most reliable thing to build a business on since not even YouTube can predict that.

So YouTube monetization remains a bonus, not a dream.

Something to pay attention to, but not to obsess over.

Clearly I’m not striving for YouTube fame, but slowly and steadily growing, and nearing the first big milestone.

1000 subscribers.

In order to make money from YouTube ads played during your video, you need:

• 1000 subscribers

• 4000 valid watch hours

Nearly there on Subscribers with 911 out of 1000.

And almost 30% of the way on watch hours.

Even then, once I hit that eligibility, it’s going to depend on how much people watch videos once they monetize.

Luckily Tech is usually a higher paying category so more expensive ads should be run on these videos, but I don’t think it’s a good business focus.

It’s easier to work on the channel because I want to and I like it.

If it happens to make money, that wouldn’t be so bad either.

Speaking of, if you ever wanted to know how to send images from Monday.com to GPT to retrieve the text, this video shows one way to do it:

Cheap Hosting

Hosting apps has been a hot topic lately for some reason.

I’ve been seeing posts on X about it which I’ve been meaning to try still…

Haven’t had a good enough reason to justify it yet though.

But there are some really cheap options for running a VPS (Virtual Private Server).

Digital Ocean, Hostinger, and Hetzner have all come up recently, and they all provide cloud computing for under $10 per month.

I’ve been a big fan of Webflow, but more and more I’ve been leaning toward the approach of running my own website app for super cheap on a VPS like one of the ones above.

Vibe coding has made Webflow less attractive as AI has become very familiar with UI frameworks like shadcn and can generate the basic css animations needed for a clean look.

The transition is on my todo list anyway.

Maybe try a minikube cluster deployed on Hetzner for about $5 per month…

We’ll see if I find a good excuse in the next few weeks to try it out.

No More No-Code

Back to the frustrations of No-Code tools…

Google is actively working to solve that problem entirely.

Google’s Opal platform aims to automate the process of building simple apps, very similarly to what n8n, Make.com, Zapier and other platforms are doing.

During a livestream this week, I tried it out and I was impressed with the result.

In one audio command it built a simple system to combine images together based on a prompt.

It did so with an interface that looks very similar to other no-code platforms, connected nodes and all.

Google has a ton of tools at this point so it can handle a good amount of functionality just using Google APIs, but something like this could be closer to the No-Code dream.

Their AI is solid enough to build the app for you, and if it eventually opens up connections to other apps outside of Google’s ecosystem, then this could be a real game-changer.

n8n has some AI capabilities but I haven’t testing them very thoroughly to be honest so maybe they are closer than I think.

I would be surprised, though.

I’m sure n8n can generate workflows to a degree, but I would bet it’s going to struggle with the sheer amount of app and node options.

I was really impressed with Google Opal even if it is limited to Google stuff.

They already have coding, images, videos, docs, meetings and email covered so this could be the more straightforward but immediately useful No-Code approach if you need something working quickly.

I’ll be anxious to see how it improves and if it becomes a regular tool in my work cycle.

Let me know if you end up trying it out.

And that’s it for this week. Wave is finally live on iOS and now Android!

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Let me know what else I missed! I’d love to hear your feedback at @jaypetersdotdev or email [email protected].

Thanks for reading!