The first drafts
From a Simple Web App to Rethinking Everything: Building LearnLang v0.1 When I started building the first version of LearnLang, I wasn’t thinking about scale, mobile ergonomics, or long‑term architecture. I just wanted something that worked—something I could use myself, something my daughter could use, something real enough to test the idea. So I reached for the tools I knew best: Go for the backend, Next.js for the frontend, and TailwindCSS to make it look clean without overthinking design. It was the classic “founder’s first draft”: fast, scrappy, and built with more optimism than planning. A web app pretending to be an app The earliest LearnLang prototype was entirely web‑based. It was responsive, it adapted to different screen sizes, and on mobile it looked like an app. I used modals everywhere—adding words, editing entries, reviewing items. It was functional, and for a while, that was enough. But the more I used it on my phone, the more I realized something important: a ...