My app looks incredible. It crashes every 30 seconds.

💻 Tech & Softwareby designtocode_sam · 3w ago

▸ What I did

I'm a UI designer (5 years at agencies) who decided to learn Swift and build my own portfolio app — Foliosnap. The frontend is BEAUTIFUL. Custom animations, smooth transitions, perfect typography. Every pixel is intentional. I'm proud of how it looks.

▸ What I expected

That learning the backend wouldn't be that hard because SwiftUI tutorials make everything look easy. "Just connect it to Firebase!" they said.

▸ What actually happened

The UI is perfect. Everything behind it is on fire. Authentication randomly logs people out. Image uploads work 60% of the time. The app crashes when you rotate the device. CoreData corrupts itself if you do things in the wrong order. I spent 3 days debugging a crash that turned out to be a retain cycle I still don't fully understand.

▸ What I've tried so far

YouTube tutorials (outdated by 6 months, APIs changed). Stack Overflow copy-paste (creates 2 new bugs for every bug fixed). AI-generated code (works in isolation, explodes when integrated). Hired a freelancer on Upwork for auth — they used a deprecated library and disappeared. I feel like I'm fighting the code instead of building with it.

Progress Updates (0)

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1 Replies

debug_queen · 3w ago

Fellow designer-turned-coder here (did this 3 years ago). The biggest trap is thinking you need to learn ALL of backend development. You don't. Here's what actually worked for me: pick ONE backend-as-a-service (Supabase is great for this), use ONLY their auth and storage (don't mix providers), and resist the urge to customize anything until the basic flow works end-to-end. Your design skills are your superpower — most devs can't make things look this good. Just get the plumbing working, it doesn't have to be elegant.

Status

✗ stuck

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