Blog posts for beginners building with AI.
These are my Medium and DEV.to articles collected into one place: practical notes on AI coding, app scope, platform choices, QA, freelancing, and learning software without pretending the path is cleaner than it is.
Cross-posted articles
Read the latest posts, then use the covers when you want the prompts or the full field manual.
8 min
Why Beginners Should Ask AI More Questions Before Building An App
The fastest way to lose control of an AI-built app is to treat the first answer like the plan. Ask more before you build.
Then the AI comes back with a confident wall of features, files, stack choices, user flows, auth decisions, database tables, integrations, edge cases, and a UI direction that somehow already has a dashboard. A lot of beginner AI app-building goes sideways because the builder treats the first output like a blueprint when it is really just a guess with excellent formatting.
9 min
The First QA Checklist I Would Run On Any AI-Built App In 2026
AI can help you build the first version faster, but you still need a simple way to prove the app actually works before you trust it.
The most dangerous moment in an AI-built app is not when the app is obviously broken. The buttons are there. The screens load. The AI says it fixed the bug. You click around for thirty seconds and nothing immediately catches fire.
8 min
Web App or Mobile App: What Should a Beginner Build First With AI in 2026?
If you are building your first app with AI, the smartest platform is usually the one that lets you finish a useful version one without turning the project into a technology obstacle course.
One of the first ways beginners make their app harder is by choosing the wrong first platform. If you are using AI to build your first real app, you are already asking your brain to hold a lot at once: the idea, the user, the screens, the data, the stack, the prompts, the bugs, the deployment path, and the little voice in the back of your head asking whether you accidentally built a haunted spreadsheet with buttons.
7 min
Freelancing Got Easier When I Stopped Carrying the Whole Project in My Head
The biggest upgrade in my freelance work was not coding faster. It was building a system my brain did not have to babysit all day.
Flexible schedule. Working for yourself. Laptop life. Coffee shop mythologies. The usual propaganda. That was one of the first things that hit me once I started doing real freelance work.
8 min
Your First App Idea Is Hiding in a Group You Already Belong To
Stop brainstorming from nowhere. Start with the worlds you already understand.
It is too big. It has no walls. It gives your brain nothing to grab. It is like asking, "What should I do with my life?" while standing in front of a vending machine. Then they do the next predictable thing. They start thinking in giant categories.
8 min
If You Skip the Map, AI Builds You a Maze
The fastest way to get bad AI-generated software is to treat coding like typing wishes into a chat box.
The bad news is that you can also build yourself into a disaster faster than ever now. I see beginners open an AI coding tool, type something like "help me build my app," and then act surprised when the result looks like a confused intern got locked in a supply closet with a keyboard and three energy drinks.
7 min
I Didn't Enter Software Through the Clean Front Door
Why my messy path into software is exactly why I care about teaching beginners how to build with AI.
I did not grow up as the kid who was building compilers in middle school, casually reading operating systems books for fun, and saying things like "I just love elegant abstractions" while everyone else was trying to survive algebra. I did not have a computer science undergraduate degree. I did not have the standard foundation. I did not arrive in software with the quiet confidence of someone who had been speaking the language since childhood.
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Marcus Kim | AI App Builder 