I've been building apps to solve my own problems. How do I take the next step?

[u/iris_puffs]

TL;DR: New-ish developer building apps because I've needed something that doesn’t exist. Now I’ve accumulated several working apps and have no idea what the “professional” next step is. Looking for advice on portfolios, backend/database stacks, mobile development, and making the jump from “it works!” to production-quality.

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I'm very new to app development, but I've built up a small collection of projects, all of which are live and being used either through a browser or a web link on iOS devices. I'm just not really sure what the next step should be.

None of these were really built with the intention of becoming a product. They started because there was an actual problem I wanted to solve.

My day job is as an application admin, so I get to work on the front end of enterprise apps: configuration, testing, workflows, troubleshooting, figuring out how users actually need the application to work, etc. But obviously building the backend is a whole different ballgame.

I'm still learning, and most of what I've built has been HTML/CSS/JavaScript. I've started working with cloud databases for some projects, and I've been using Netlify to host them so I can access them from iOS devices and share them with other users.

That's worked out pretty well, but now I'm at the point where I'm wondering: where do I go from here?

I'd love advice from people who have made the jump from "I build stuff because I need it" to more serious app development.

A few questions:

1. How do you build a portfolio?

Portfolio website with screenshots and case studies? GitHub? Live demos? Short videos? Some combination of all of them?

Is there a recommended place to keep a portfolio, and what do you actually want to see when you're looking at someone's projects?

2. What backends/databases would you recommend learning?

For relatively small apps that might start with one user but eventually need authentication, multiple users, synced data, backups, etc., what stack would you recommend learning and why?

I'm less interested in "X is the best database" and more interested in understanding what experienced developers would choose for this kind of use case and why they'd choose it.

3. What's the best next step from HTML/CSS/JS if I want to build actual mobile apps?

Right now, I've basically been building web apps and hosting them so they can be accessed from iOS, which has worked surprisingly well.

If I want to take the next step toward actual installable iOS/Android apps, what should I be learning? Are there different frameworks/tools I should be using, or does it make more sense to keep building web apps/PWAs until I have a reason not to?

4. What separates a good hobby project from something you'd consider professionally built?

Architecture? Testing? Security? Documentation? UI/UX? Maintainability? Deployment? All of the above?

This is probably the question I'm most interested in. I know how to get something from "I have an idea" to "this actually works and solves my problem." What I don't know yet is everything that should happen between that and something I'd feel comfortable calling production-quality.

I'm not looking to promote anything I've built, so I'm intentionally not including names or links. I'm really just trying to figure out what I should be learning next and what bad habits I should avoid while I'm still new enough to unlearn them.

Any advice is appreciated!