Nine Things I Learned Building a Scrabble App for My Friends

harlan.harris@gmail.com (Harlan Harris) — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I grew up playing Scrabble -- my grandma was cuthroat. I've played occasionally through the years, and more recently I've been playing Scrabble Go, the official, licensed Scrabble app, with friends. It's fine, but it's full of ads (unless you pay them), it has annoying side games (gems? why am I earning gems?), and I wished it had features like word definitions and better game history. So, starting last year, I built my own web app. I've had half a dozen friends and family members playing with me, each other, and a robot for the last few months, and it's been a lot of fun. I thought I'd share a few things I've learned along the way.

AI-Assisted Coding, Side Projects, and Donationware

harlan.harris@gmail.com (Harlan Harris) — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The rise of AI-assisted coding tools has made it dramatically easier and faster to build small side projects than ever before. What used to take weeks of evenings and weekends can now be done in a few focused sessions, with an AI pair programmer handling much of the boilerplate, debugging, and implementation details. This has opened up new possibilities for building tools that solve personal problems or scratch specific itches, without the overhead of building a full commercial product.

Side-Projects on Harlan D. Harris

Nine Things I Learned Building a Scrabble App for My Friends

AI-Assisted Coding, Side Projects, and Donationware