The Empire
What Simon Built
The Unexpected Turn
The Man Who Built a Farming RPG While Teaching 150,000 Developers
Somewhere between explaining Expo Router to a developer in Jakarta and answering Discord questions about EAS builds, Simon Grimm sat down and started making a video game.
Tiny Harvest is not a side project in the "I hacked this together on a weekend" sense. It is a full iOS and Android release, available on the App Store and Google Play, with a distinct aesthetic, cozy idle gameplay, and no forced ads. Updated as recently as March 2026.
The interesting thing isn't that he built a game. The interesting thing is that he did it using the same tools he teaches - React Native and mobile development patterns he has spent a decade explaining to other people. The classroom and the studio are the same room.
It also says something about how Simon approaches his career. He does not specialize himself into a corner. He started with Ionic, moved to React Native, branched into Expo, touched Flutter and Next.js and Svelte. He experiments. The game is an experiment that shipped.
His GitHub handle is saimon24 - a phonetic spelling of "Simon." He has been using it since before most of his current audience knew what React Native was.
Skill Depth (Community Perception)
Personality Traits
The Timeline
Ten Years of
Showing Up
From a blog nobody knew about to the community's #1 video creator. The arc isn't a rocket ship - it's a long, steady compound curve.
In His Own Words
What Simon Actually Says
"Create more components. When I got into React and React Native, I wanted my code to work. Usually, my screens were filled with a bunch of logic, styling, view handling and everything a page needed. But over time, I developed the habit of creating even small pieces as components."On architecture philosophy
"With Expo Router, Evan Bacon implemented file-based routing for native applications. So what you're used to from Next.js, SvelteKit, or whatever - everyone's using file-based routing."JS Party #328, Changelog (June 2024)
"No Donald, React Native is NATIVE."On Twitter, defending the runtime to its critics
"As always, you can get the code from..."His catchphrase - the thing every tutorial ends with. Every single one.
The Method
How He Actually Teaches
Most developer YouTubers build tutorials. Simon builds products. The distinction sounds small. It isn't.
When he teaches push notifications, he shows a real notification flow with EAS - not a skeleton that breaks in production. When he covers authentication, it's a full stack implementation. When Expo Router shipped and changed the mental model for navigation, he had a tutorial live before most devs had figured out what changed.
He publishes the code. All of it. Every tutorial has a GitHub repo. The GitHub organization for Galaxies-dev is a library of complete, working app examples covering everything from Fintech clones to AI chat interfaces to full game prototypes.
The Zero to Hero course on Galaxies.dev is the fullest expression of this: a complete arc from zero knowledge to a shipped app, covering React Native architecture, Expo Router, authentication, push notifications, in-app purchases, and App Store submission. 2,000+ developers have completed the mission.
The weekly video schedule is part of the method, not just a cadence. Consistency trains both the teacher and the student. Simon's audience knows when to show up because he always shows up first.
Topics Covered at Galaxies.dev
Publication schedule
Every Thursday
15:00 CET ยท @galaxies_dev
Side Quest
He Also Built a Game
Tiny Harvest is a cozy idle farm RPG for iOS and Android. No forced ads. Built entirely solo. Available on both major app stores as of 2026.
The backstory: a developer educator who teaches people how to build mobile apps decided to actually build a mobile app - a real one, not a tutorial demo. Tiny Harvest is the result. It has its own website, its own Discord, its own update cycle.
It is, in a way, the most honest proof of work in his portfolio. He doesn't just know how to explain React Native. He knows how to ship with it.
Tiny Harvest - At a Glance
The Details
Fun Facts & Quirks
GitHub: saimon24
His GitHub username is a phonetic spelling of "Simon." He has been using it since before most of his current audience knew what React Native was.
Business Student, Builder Mind
Studied Business Informatics at university. Not Computer Science. The business instinct probably explains why his content business works when so many technical creators burn out.
"Devdactic" Was a Gift
The blog name was given by a friend who already owned the domain. A combination of "Dev" and "Didactic." Simon just took it and built a decade-long brand on top of it.
Personal Welcome, Every Time
Every member who joined Ionic Academy got a personal welcome from Simon himself. Not an automated sequence. Not a team. Just him.
Munster, Gym, Repeat
Lives in Munster, Germany with his family. Goes to the gym. Codes. Posts on Thursdays. A life lived mostly in flow state.
Transparent by Default
When he paused the Rocket Ship podcast, he wrote a public LinkedIn post explaining exactly why. In a world of ghosted projects, that's rare enough to notice.
Media Appearances
Simon in the Wild
June 2024. Discussed Expo Router, file-based routing for native apps, and why Expo is the path forward for most teams.
June 2023. Covered Ionic, cross-platform strategies, and the mechanics of building an audience as a developer content creator.
Discussed going self-employed, running Ionic Academy, and what it actually looks like to build a developer education business from scratch.
Find Simon Online