# An App Can Be a Home-Cooked Meal by Robin Sloan ## Metadata - Author: [[Robin Sloan]] - Full Title: An App Can Be a Home-Cooked Meal - Category: #articles - URL: https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/ ## Highlights added March 11, 2024 at 8:57 AM I am the programming equivalent of a home cook. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hrpnkgs2psexr85gsy62cnab)) When you liberate programming from the requirement to be professional and scalable, it becomes a different activity altogether, just as cooking at home is really nothing like cooking in a commercial kitchen. I can report to you: not only is this different activity rewarding in almost exactly the same way that cooking for someone you love is rewarding, there’s another feeling, too, specific to this realm. I have struggled to find words for this, but/and I think it might be the crux of the whole thing: This messaging app I built for, and with, my family, it won’t change unless we want it to change. There will be no sudden redesign, no flood of ads, no pivot to chase a userbase inscrutable to us. It might go away at some point, but that will be our decision. What *is* this feeling? Independence? Security? Sovereignty? Is it simply … the feeling of being home? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hrpnpwsc2vmy67yy8eag693a))