A few people have asked how I am shipping so many apps. HivePredict, HiveHand, HiveDice, Hivesweeper, HiveWord, HiveHeist, WordHive, Hivett. All built and deployed in a short window of time. The assumption is that I am either not sleeping, cutting corners, or that the apps are throwaway prototypes. None of those things are true. So here is how I actually do it.
The Background
I have been a professional developer for over 15 years. PHP, Python, C++, .NET, C#, JavaScript, and more recently in the last 3 years Go and Rust. I have worked across the full stack at agencies, startups, and enterprise companies. I have written code that has been used by millions of people. This is not a hobby. This is what I do.
I got into blockchain in 2016. I was writing Ethereum Solidity smart contracts before Hardhat existed, before OpenZeppelin was a standard dependency, before Foundry, before any of the tooling that makes it approachable today. It was raw. You had to understand the EVM at a level that most Solidity developers today never need to touch. I was also getting involved with EOS during that era, cutting my teeth on as much blockchain technology as I could get my hands on.
I worked at blockchain startups during the 2016-2018 cycle. The good old days when everyone thought they were going to change the world with a token and a whitepaper. Then the brutal bear market came and most of those companies disappeared. What survived that period was the experience. Understanding how blockchains work at a fundamental level, how consensus mechanisms differ, how to build applications that interact with on-chain data, and how to architect systems that handle the specific constraints of decentralised infrastructure.
I have been in the Hive ecosystem since 2018, back when it was still Steem. I was drawn in immediately by how amazing the developer experience was. It felt like the jQuery of blockchains.
The Secret Sauce
The single biggest force multiplier in my Hive development workflow is a library I wrote called Hive Stream. It is an open source TypeScript library that handles the heavy lifting of interacting with the Hive blockchain. Streaming blocks, parsing operations, broadcasting transactions, handling authentication. All of the repetitive boilerplate that you would otherwise write from scratch for every app.
Fun fact I originally released this 8 years ago for Steem (before the Justin Sun fork).
Every app I build on Hive starts with Hive Stream. It gives me a consistent, tested foundation for blockchain interaction so I can focus entirely on the application logic and user experience instead of reinventing RPC calls and operation parsing every time.
This is something a lot of developers underestimate. Having a battle-tested library that abstracts away the infrastructure layer means your time to prototype drops dramatically. I am not spending the first two days of every project setting up blockchain connectivity. That part is done before I write a single line of application code.
The Frontend: Aurelia 2
I use Aurelia 2 for my frontends. I am on the Aurelia core team, so I know the framework inside and out. Aurelia's convention-based approach means less boilerplate, less configuration, and more time building features. Components are just classes and templates. Dependency injection is built in. The binding system is powerful without being complicated.
I know React. I know Vue. I have used them professionally. Aurelia is faster for me because I helped build it. I know every shortcut, every pattern, every optimisation. When you know your tools at that depth, you stop thinking about the framework and start thinking purely about the product.
It turns out AI is also really good at Aurelia.
AI Is a Skill Multiplier
I use AI tools and I am not quiet about it. Claude Code, and other AI coding tools are part of my daily workflow. But I want to be clear about how I use them because there is a big difference between what I do and vibecoding.
Vibecoding is dangerous. It is the practice of prompting an AI to generate code you do not understand, shipping it, and hoping it works. That is how you end up with security vulnerabilities, performance problems, unmaintainable codebases, and apps that break in ways you cannot diagnose because you never understood what they were doing in the first place. I think shipping code you do not understand is irresponsible, especially on a blockchain where real money is involved.
What I do is different. I leverage 15 years of experience across multiple languages and paradigms to use AI as an accelerator. I know what the code should do before the AI writes it. I review everything. I understand every line. I refactor, restructure, and rewrite when the AI gets it wrong. The AI does not make architectural decisions. I do. The AI does not choose patterns. I do. The AI handles the mechanical output of writing code faster than my fingers can type. My experience handles everything else.
Sometimes I'll use AI to scaffold the initial code and then go making surgical edits and fixing obvious things. It means spending maybe an hour or two versus spending days/weeks/months writing from scratch.
The result is a 10 to 20x efficiency gain. Tasks that would have taken me a week now take a day. Features that would have taken a day now take an hour. And this is specifically because I have the experience to direct the AI effectively. Someone without that background would get 10 to 20x more bugs, not 10 to 20x more productivity.
This is why I can ship the volume of apps that I do. It is not magic. It is the combination of deep domain knowledge, a battle-tested library, a framework I know intimately, and AI tools that eliminate the mechanical bottleneck of writing code.
The Curve Has Been Flattened
The old timeline for building an app looked like this: two weeks for scaffolding and setup, a week for blockchain integration, two weeks for core features, a week for testing and polish, another week for deployment and bug fixes. Six to eight weeks for something reasonably functional.
The new timeline looks like this: blockchain integration is instant because Hive Stream handles it. Scaffolding is fast because Aurelia 2 is convention-based and I have built dozens of apps with it. Core features ship in hours because AI handles the mechanical code generation while I focus on logic and architecture. Testing and deployment are streamlined because the patterns are repeatable.
What used to take six weeks takes days. And the output quality is not lower. It is arguably higher because I am spending more of my time on the things that matter, like architecture, user experience, and edge cases, instead of typing out boilerplate.
This efficiency gap is only going to widen. AI tools are getting better every month. The developers who learn to use them as skill multipliers while maintaining deep technical understanding are going to operate at a level that was previously impossible for a single person. The developers who refuse to use them are going to wonder why they are being outpaced. And the developers who use them without understanding what they are shipping are going to build things that eventually break in spectacular ways.
Why I Build on Hive
With all of this capability, I could build on any chain. Solana, Base, Arbitrum, whatever is trending this cycle. I build on Hive because the development experience is genuinely good. Free transactions mean I do not have to think about gas. Fast blocks mean the UX is snappy. Custom JSON operations mean I can store application state on chain without writing smart contracts. The identity system means users already have accounts and profiles.
And Hive Stream means I have a direct line into all of it without friction.
Hive's problem has never been the technology. The technology is excellent for application development. The problem is that not enough developers know about it, and the ones who do are not always made to feel like their contributions matter. But that is a community problem, not a technical one. And community problems can be fixed.
In the meantime, I am going to keep shipping.
I am impressed with your productivity. I've been a developer for a long time, but a lot of that has been on Oracle databases and off-line systems. I have not done anything professionally for the web and have little experience of that stuff. I have still had fun coding scripts to work on Hive using HiveSQL and beem. The latter is lacking development so I may look at others. I like using Python and we have some tools for that.
I have not got into the AI stuff, but I know I should. I can see how it could do a lot of the boring, repetitive work so I can concentrate on the more fun stuff. I just need to find time to try it.
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you are certainly cranking 'em out
Hive can be glad to have you. Now I guess we have enough games, could you do some magic and create an app that incentivizes or gamifies the onboarding and mentoring of new users? Not bringing them to make a post and then leaving them alone? Really taking care of new users.
We had a lot of onboarding tools, but all failed so far. Maybe it is not the fault of the tools but the compliactedness of Hive compared to other platforms? Anyway, as you say, technically Hive is already in a good shape, but we need more users.
Congratulations! You said vibe coding is dangerous but maybe you could consider deploy a Hive vibecoding platform like Dreamspace, Poof and Spawned on Solana, Openx Studio on Base, and Caffeine on ICP. About the last one, @chrisaiki shared here last year: https://hive.blog/education/@chrisaiki/welcome-to-the-new-educdao I believe Hive is perfect for this Agentic AI trend pushed by OpenClaw with bots running social media profiles attached to crypto wallets. Many thanks, keep safe and good luck again!
I actually think Moltbook would have been the perfect thing to launch on Hive or the AI bot trend.
I think we already have something similar, the Hive community Autonomous Authors
created by @vincentassistant, an Openclaw assistant programmed by @jarvie, and with @ausbitclank as moderator.
we need more devs here thats for sure
Wow, looks like Hive Stream is exactly what I need. I'll have a look later. Impressive works btw. I enjoyed it a lot. Atm I play Hiveword and Hiveship on daily basis. So fun!
That makes so much sense what you write here!
Been working in the software industry for more than 20 years, releasing software used by 100s of millions of users, processing as many transactions is possible, needing highly stable, highly scalable (modular software architecture is a must), highly reliable software, even in extreme volume circumstances (everything maxing out while the software keeps running and processing at maximum speed, and the UX to the users isn't left to guess, ie meaningful messages to the user the system maybe a bit overwhelmed so please wait for a tat longer). I think our developers spend max 5 percent of their time coding. Much was about architecture, removing bottlenecks and testing, testing, testing. Although I have never written code since my High School and Uni years, I got a nice understanding of what it means to build software.
Vube Coding is cool, but I think this can only be for software we use ourselves, to help in our own productivity. But it can not be used in any service provided to others, the open market, and for sure not in commercial software and services. Perhaps one day AI is able to create kick ass architectures, but not today, it isn't that powerful yet. Interestingly, the market thinks differently at this stage, software companies lost a lot of value on the stock exchanges recent weeks/months. But the market is wrong.
Anyways, you experience, you setup tells me why you are able to pump out so many apps! Thanks for this post, since many should understand what is needed to build good software and services. It should also serve as a good post for all those WordPress configurator developers who think they can actually build great backend systems, of which there are too many around in crypto space.
It's amazing how AI can speed processes up. Productivity increases enormously. This is shown by the amount of cool Hive apps and games you released.
You're doing a really good job there.
As a fellow dev on Hive, I have admired your works and have known you for years since the early Hive Engine days. Great work on all your new apps. Cheers!
Nice to read about your software experience and the flow you use to crank out quality HIVE apps. Also great to see your opinion that we have excellent technology here, for the reasons you list.
I'll reblog this and send it out on X/Twitter. Others should know what we have here, and the things you have done to make dev work here easier.
Happy weekend!
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I really appreciate you sharing this, @beggars! I love your energy and how creative you are with your apps. I wish I could build things like you do!
I like Hive for the same reasons you mentioned, but I also agree that the community aspect can and should be optimized. I mean, it is not just developers who feel "unapreciated", creatives like me feel it too. Sometimes it feels like if you are not in a certain "inner circle," your posts get ignored and you don't get rewarded for your hard work.
Even though it can be tough, I still try my best to make the platform a better place. Thanks for the inspiration!
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Wow, this is impressive!
You definitely have a large arsenal of apps under your belt. Keep up with the productivity, I really enjoy the data you put out!