One for the Geeks:
Before You Open Another Tab

This one is for the geeks. You know yourselves.

You’ll spend three sleepless nights making something work, celebrate for approximately eleven seconds, then announce, “I’m bored. I have another idea.”

Meanwhile, someone is still using your “little project” to run their business, learn a skill or ask a question they’ve been afraid to say aloud.

You’ve moved on. They’re wondering how they ever managed without it.

Before you open another tab, can we talk about that? The things you’ve built over the years that have become so useful, so ordinary, that even you forget how extraordinary they once were?

I’m asking because I’m guilty too. My attention has occasionally left the project before the documentation arrived.

Remember Symbian?

Yes, we’re going back that far. Please allow your nostalgia a moment to boot.

For many of us, Symbian helped introduce the idea that a phone could do more than make calls, send messages and host a very determined snake. It was part of that early smartphone world, when installing an application felt like personally participating in the future.

I was Fortunate enough to meet one of the developers who worked on the system, and he took me on as a mentee.

Yes, Fortunate. My parents had apparently anticipated the networking opportunities.

I had been playing around with app design and came up with something I thought was incredible: Ask Without Shame, an app offering questions and quick answers about sexual and reproductive health and rights.

The idea mattered to me. People had questions about their bodies, relationships and sexuality, but asking them could require the courage of someone defending a PhD before a panel of disappointed aunties.

Could we make getting an answer a little easier?

At the time, it was incredibly exciting. Then time passed, the excitement settled, and I started thinking about other things.

A familiar software problem: the developer’s attention had migrated.

Then I met Xander.

Deimmm.

Together with the team, we began working on what became our first chatbot: Ask RHU. As my boss, Jackson Chekweko, put it, my baby had been born.

A very unusual baby. It lived inside Facebook Messenger and arrived already answering questions about sex.

Ask RHU formally launched in December 2021, during the pandemic, providing instant responses to questions about sexual and reproductive health and rights.

Over time, more than two million users came through, seeking information on sexuality, reproductive health and COVID-19.

Today, “we built a chatbot” might earn you a polite nod before someone asks whether it can also write a business plan and resolve their childhood issues.

But back then? That was a moment.

Someone could ask a question they were uncomfortable saying aloud and receive information immediately. No rehearsing the question. No studying somebody’s face to decide whether it was safe to continue.

Looking back, I wonder whether I gave myself enough time to appreciate that before becoming interested in the next thing.

I suspect a few geeks reading this know exactly what I mean.

You wrestle with an idea for months. You fix one bug and discover that it has relatives. You finally get everything working, briefly experience happiness, then think:

Actually, I could rebuild this.

The users have barely found the login button. You have emotionally moved into another repository.

That curiosity produces wonderful things. It also makes it surprisingly easy to walk past your own contribution without properly seeing it.

Which brings me to YouTube.

Did the people who built it fully imagine what they were setting in motion?

YouTube now reports billions of monthly logged-in users, with more than 20 million videos uploaded every day. It had already passed two billion monthly logged-in users back in 2021. Just sit with that scale for a moment.

Then imagine a timeline without YouTube.

Where would we go when Excel starts behaving like it has personal grievances? Who would explain the camera setting that the manual somehow makes more confusing? How many of us would still be tying a tie using prayer and structural improvisation?

And developers, be honest. How many projects have survived because somebody, somewhere, uploaded a tutorial?

The University of YouTube has educated a considerable number of us. Admission is free. Graduation is unlikely. You arrive for one lesson and leave forty minutes later knowing how an octopus opens a jar.

But think about what sits beneath that familiar red play button. A teacher reaching learners they will never meet. A musician finding an audience without waiting for permission. Someone discovering that a skill they thought was beyond them can be learned, paused and learned again.

Someone built the place where all that could happen.

And people still maintain it. They fix what breaks, improve what frustrates us and keep it available whenever we casually reach for it.

That is what leaves me in awe.

We get used to extraordinary things so quickly. Yesterday, watching someone teach you a skill from the other side of the world felt astonishing. Today, the video buffers for three seconds and we take it personally.

Somewhere between “How is this even possible?” and “Why is this thing so slow?” we forget the people who made it possible.

Sometimes those people forget too.

So, dear geek, look back at something you built.

Who used it? What became easier for them? Did it help someone learn, earn, ask a difficult question or finish work in time to go home?

You might remember the awkward interface. Someone else might remember finally getting an answer.

You might have outgrown the project. Its usefulness may have continued quite happily without your excitement.

And it doesn’t need two billion users to deserve a moment of pride. A tool that saves ten people an hour every week has earned its place in the world too.

If people still depend on it, perhaps it deserves a little care, some documentation or a proper handover before you disappear into your next brilliant idea. Even digital babies need someone to check on them.

I hope the people who helped build Symbian, YouTube and all those quieter tools we rely on occasionally lean back and give themselves a small, thoroughly deserved chest thump.

I hope Xander does too.

And I am reminding myself to do the same.

We are allowed to appreciate what we helped bring into the world before chasing what comes next.

Go on. Take a moment.

Your next side project can survive five minutes without you.