Today’s article is the 3rd (out of 4) in the EM-builder series!

Leading Developers

A Director of Engineering shares his journey building a 3D no-code platform as a side project, working 15 hours per week while maintaining his full-time role. After going full-time when his company closed, he discovered the product was too complex for non-technical users but worked well for engineers. This led to a pivot toward test-driven AI code generation for regulated industries, targeting developers and engineering managers instead of the original no-code market.

3D No-Code, nights and weekends - a director of engineering’s side project

Getting first customers (a bittersweet moment)

The Pivot: From No-Code 3D Builder to Test-driven AI for Engineers

<p>Sometimes your research into a sleep aid produces an antihistamine… i.e you have a good product, for a different market.  Good luck!</p>
<p>Aside, the ad on the page made me chuckle</p>
<pre><code class="language-text">
Tools like Cursor and Claude Code are great for side projects. But when you’ve got microservices and a messy codebase, the results are underwhelming.

</code></pre>
