Hi, I'm Ali

Engineer by degree, software builder by choice. I design and build premium, minimal software, and I share what I learn so other people can build better software too.

How I got here

It started with my dad's PC and a lot of video games. None of them spoke Arabic back then, so I taught myself English just to understand the menus and the story on screen. It ended up being my best subject at school.

I didn't know what I wanted to do yet, and I liked the idea of being an engineer, so I went into civil engineering. Supervising concrete turned out not to be my thing. I nearly dropped out in my third year.

Then came a programming class. Fortran, of all things. And I fell for it: the logic, the flow, the fact that you can tell a machine what to do and it just does it. I aced every programming class I took, and after graduating I kept going: web design, then front end, then back end, then tutorials on YouTube.

One of those tutorials, on building a Telegram bot with Python, passed 75,000 views. That's how tech creator Ahmed Ali found me. One bot turned into years of working together on bots that went viral and on his site, a7.ae. Everything I learned there is now going into PowerTeleBot, a place where creators build their own bots just by asking.

Why "MoreThanCoder"

When I was learning, I watched a channel called notJust.dev and wanted to make something like it, my own way. The name also says what I mean: writing code isn't the impressive part anymore. AI writes plenty of it.

I'm an engineer who grew up on computers, chose software on purpose and took a risk to follow it. I also care about design and draw my own interfaces. These days I direct AI agents the way a site engineer supervises a build: I set the plan, check every detail, and don't sign off on anything I wouldn't put my name on.

What I care about

• Performance. How long the page takes to load. Whether the bot survives the day a post goes viral.
• Clean design. Screens that are easy to find your way around, and APIs that are pleasant to use. I've reshaped JSON that worked fine just to make it easier and faster to use.
• Keeping it stupid simple. Less to break, less to learn, less to pay for.
• Doing good. A lot of software takes more than it gives. I'd rather build the kind that helps, so I'm picky about the projects I take on.

What I'm reading

Right now: Ultralearning by Scott Young, 17 Anti-Procrastination Hacks by Dominic Mann and Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by Joe Dispenza.

The ones that changed how I think: Atomic Habits by James Clear, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson, and the Quran, a book about life I keep coming back to.

Working together

I work Saturday to Thursday, 9 am to 6 pm Iraq time, in English or Arabic. The clock at the top of this page shows the time here right now. Send me a voice note on Telegram with your idea. I'll ask my questions, then come back with a demo, a short research paper and a plan with time and cost. You'll see a demo every week, and after launch I stick around to fix things and help you get set up, free.