Love this topic, thanks OP! Many years ago I created an iOS bread dough calculator that basically hard-coded the ingredients in percentage form. I used it personally for years to make pizza crusts, etc. all in a scalable format. Once, my wife and I hosted a big "make your own" pizza party and I used the app to create enough dough for 30 or so personal pizzas.
Eventually I pushed it forward (thanks to the Unity Engine at the time) and made it a "real" app on the App Store. As others have noted, there's a large gap between bespoke, home-cooked software and commercial choices. As a full-time developer this was a side-project and still suffers, imho, as an under-invested commercial app. The app has had very modest success (pays about the equivalent of one espresso a week) but I still love it.
When an app is "just yours" there's an aura of fun about the project that can get stripped away when the trajectory becomes more commercial.
Eventually I pushed it forward (thanks to the Unity Engine at the time) and made it a "real" app on the App Store. As others have noted, there's a large gap between bespoke, home-cooked software and commercial choices. As a full-time developer this was a side-project and still suffers, imho, as an under-invested commercial app. The app has had very modest success (pays about the equivalent of one espresso a week) but I still love it.
When an app is "just yours" there's an aura of fun about the project that can get stripped away when the trajectory becomes more commercial.