From marketing to dev workflows. Here's what surprised me most about building software.

Hi everyone, I'm Darius Tran. Spent most of my career in content strategy and marketing before slowly drifting into the world of building actual software. Joining PH because this community feels like one of the few spaces where builders genuinely talk to each other instead of just posting wins.

The biggest surprise for me wasn't writing code. It was realizing how much of "shipping a product" has almost nothing to do with the product itself. Pricing, positioning, distribution, user conversations, support, all of it eats more time than building the thing. None of the tutorials I followed prepared me for that.

The other thing that hit me hard: the gap between "I built something" and "people actually use it" is way wider than I expected. Watching 80% of trial users disappear in week one is a kind of humbling you can't read your way out of. It teaches you fast that the product is rarely the bottleneck.

Here mostly to learn from people further down the path and contribute where I can. If you've made a similar jump from non-tech into building, would love to hear what surprised you most. Glad to be in the community.