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Ask HN: How do you manage your personal software projects?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your personal software projects?

#21

Post by PaulHoule »

6DM wrote: post #10

There's a few different approaches to this: 1. Set a deadline and go for it. This can take up a lot of your time and make you feel burned out. I'm assuming you want to avoid this. 2. Assume it will take longer to release than you would like, but incrementally make progress each week. I am currently #2 after trying #1 with a completely new stack. I eventually decided that it's better to workout with my significant oth…

In project management you balance cost, schedule, and scope.

The simplest thing is to focus on scope, and make a checklist for when the project is "ready to ship". Add things as they come up, remove them, edit them, etc.

That kind of checklist is related to the "procedural" sort of checklist which is important also.

On top of that you can add practices such as "grouping projects into milestones", "estimating the effort involved in tasks", "forming a dependency tree between the tasks", "setting delivery dates for milestones", etc.

Checklisting is the basic practice. I was on the project from hell that we rescied where a real bully of a manager got us all, developers, testers, UX, ops, on a checklist -- I think estimates are a good thing but key people on the team would not play along so we did not do them.

It was not easy but we shipped.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your personal software projects?

#22

Post by Philipp__ »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #14

I use a notebook. One that I write in using a pen. When stopping for the evening/day/whatever I take 5 - 10 minutes to write in my notebook what part of the project is working, what has been changed, open questions, and a list of three things to do next. You can think of it like having a standup meeting with myself :-). When I go back to the project, I thumb back through the pages in my notebook until I find the last…

Thank God I am not the only one who is still using pen and paper for the most part. Yeah, org-mode in Emacs is amazing, I love it, but notebook won't be replaced anytime soon, at least in my case. I found that I write and draw a lot while I'm programming, It may be weird but It's kinda easier for me to visualize and understand algorithms better. Plus there is something about writing that I like a lot. I am still at academia, and I find writing code on paper very strange and efficient way to learn. Because I do not have a lot of experience it is kinda hard for me not to skim code and fly over it. When I take function or chunk of code, write it down, and look at it, I start drawing and analyzing everything much more in-depth. I will probably by years be able to go in-depth like that just by looking at code and staring at monitor, but for now I like to write it down and program it on paper. Totally different dimension, distraction free and for me very efficient. But maybe I am just weirdo tho.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your personal software projects?

#23

Post by tmaly »

I use bitbucket right now as my version control. I was using trello to help me keep track of what I want to do, but I have found a simple TODO.txt file in my repository to be much simpler.

Make sure you commit frequently, use tags, and find a good way to handle dependencies with the language you are using.

I use a Makefile to build all aspects of my side project, and deployment is very straight forward on a vps I rent.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your personal software projects?

#25

Post by MichaelBurge »

Usually before I start any project at all, I'll write a couple pages summary in a Google doc. I'll consider implementation, but I won't try to plan out the entire implementation since it always changes.

I keep a separate Google doc(or a Trello or Kanbanflow board) with a list of specific pending tasks. This is designed to be easy to grab tasks off of without having to think much.

If it's been so long since I last did anything that I don't understand any of the tasks, I'll take 30 minutes to update the summary and task documents.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your personal software projects?

#26

Post by ioddly »

fumonko wrote: post #15

If you're an emacs user, definitely check out org mode. Or if you've wanted an excuse to check out emacs, org mode may be a reason for you to make the move. It's insanely powerful but not for everybody. http://orgmode.org

I use org-mode (with vim). It's low effort and anyone can see what I plan to do and submit changes with a pull request, without needing access to something other than the repository.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your personal software projects?

#27

Post by talkingtab »

alias demo='vim "$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)"/demo.txt'

I have a bunch of these aliases for files I use for specific purposes. "demo.txt" holds a description of my next waypoint- I call it demo because it has to be something I can show. There are aliases for bugs, howto, etc.

I don't have to use an external tool, as I'm working on some code I can just type "bug" at the command line and enter some text. Not super high tech but easy enough that I actually use it.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your personal software projects?

#29

Post by daily-q »

lazylester wrote: post #20

Personally I use TDD (or more precisely BDD) for this purpose. If I leave the project overnight, or for a week or a month, I can come back to it, run the tests, and the failing and/or pending tests tell me what I was doing when I last worked on it. So I always leave an in-process development project with failing tests. If they're all green, I don't know what to do next!

This method also works for me. Usually the failing test left behind is something in the same space of where work needs to be done, but I like to keep the failing code trivial so that I can ramp up. 'Works great. A TODO file can also be used to accomplish this if TDD isn't your thing.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your personal software projects?

#30

Post by asimuvPR »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #14

I use a notebook. One that I write in using a pen. When stopping for the evening/day/whatever I take 5 - 10 minutes to write in my notebook what part of the project is working, what has been changed, open questions, and a list of three things to do next. You can think of it like having a standup meeting with myself :-). When I go back to the project, I thumb back through the pages in my notebook until I find the last…

+1 for notebooks. You can scribble notes and drawings and not worry about anything. Its simpler to manage.
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