People ask: you have award-winning animation, a YouTube channel, real work. Why is "Independent iOS Developer" the first line of your bio?
The answer isn't "animation is worse." Animation taught me more than code: rhythm, narrative, emotional control. That's still in every product I ship.
The answer is: shipping rewrites your definition of 'done.' Finish an animation, drop it on YouTube, and at best someone hearts it. iOS isn't that. It has to clear App Review. Get downloaded. Get opened at some specific moment of someone's day. Not crash on the critical flow. And then someone has to pay NT$99 for it.
That distance — from 'idea in head' to 'someone paid NT$99' — is the chasm animation never has to cross. Not because animation can't, but because YouTube's model doesn't require you to.
When you're accountable for every session opened, every button tapped, every subscription billed, your way of seeing the world permanently shifts. You start asking: 'is this worth their time?' 'Will this button cramp a thumb?' 'Does this paywall make people close the app?'
Those questions have no right answer. Only 'will the user pay?'
I'm not saying iOS dev is higher than animation. I'm saying the act of shipping to the App Store forces a brutality of self-evaluation no other medium I've worked in does.
So iOS goes first. Animation is the underlying logic, the skeleton. iOS is where I get reality-checked daily.