The art of over-engineering your side projects • Hacker News Board

Re: The art of over-engineering your side projects

#181

Post by ben_jones » Fri, Sep 01, 2017, 6:42 PM UTC

czep wrote: post #176

The whole point of a side project is to over-engineer it! The thought of holding myself to deadlines and driving myself to "ship" is totally antithetical to the entire purpose of a hobby project. It's a welcome relief from the 9-to-5 constant necessity to cut corners and finish things without ever properly understanding them because there's no time. For my side projects, I actually want to go down rabbit holes. I wil…

I think there's an important conflation of what a side project is to many people. If I mention to any of my non technical friends that I'm building an app their minds go to the movie "The Social Network" or to Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. They become excited and interested - up until the point where they realize it has nothing to do with Facebook or Tinder or Instagram.

I have no doubt that this effects the side projects developers choose, or how they present them. Places like HN will always to a certain extent push people to "launch" and monetize their projects.

Re: The art of over-engineering your side projects

#182

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 01, 2017, 7:00 PM UTC

krptos wrote: post #180

czep wrote: post #176

The whole point of a side project is to over-engineer it! The thought of holding myself to deadlines and driving myself to "ship" is totally antithetical to the entire purpose of a hobby project. It's a welcome relief from the 9-to-5 constant necessity to cut corners and finish things without ever properly understanding them because there's no time. For my side projects, I actually want to go down rabbit holes. I wil…

Agreed. Generally, at any point of time I have two types of side projects going on: #1. One that I am very clear about how to implement. One that I want build, ship and grab users as fast as I can. The real goal of the project is to get it out their in the market and make a tiny dent in the universe ;) #2. One that I am not very clear about what it's gonna become. This one I want to take it slow. Experiment. Play wit…

[deleted]

Re: The art of over-engineering your side projects

#183

Post by imhoguy » Fri, Sep 01, 2017, 7:11 PM UTC

GigabyteCoin wrote: post #153

>You’re so hyped for this project and confident that it will succeed that you start thinking about the future: “how will I scale my application for the millions of users it will have?” That's one of my side project vices! Every time I write a new login database... I wonder if I should make the ID a MEDIUMINT or INT.

I go full and make them BIGINT straight away. One less thing to worry once I will become billionaire.

Re: The art of over-engineering your side projects

#184

Post by Outrageous » Fri, Sep 01, 2017, 7:28 PM UTC

I feel like it's all related to your passion for the product. If you really love your side project, it's pretty likely it will be over-engineered. Whereas if you aren't that into it, it's much more likely to be under-enginered.

Re: The art of over-engineering your side projects

#185

Post by johnfn » Fri, Sep 01, 2017, 7:32 PM UTC

czep wrote: post #176

The whole point of a side project is to over-engineer it! The thought of holding myself to deadlines and driving myself to "ship" is totally antithetical to the entire purpose of a hobby project. It's a welcome relief from the 9-to-5 constant necessity to cut corners and finish things without ever properly understanding them because there's no time. For my side projects, I actually want to go down rabbit holes. I wil…

HN is made up of two groups in ever constant warfare, the yin and yang, as it were- the group who thinks that programming should be fun, experimental and enjoyable, and the group that thinks that programming is a means to the end of getting a product to market and nothing more.

Whenever a post from one group (such as the article) comes out, a post from the other (such as OP) will quickly appear. And everyone loves it :)

For what it's worth, I think that both perspectives are valid. It depends only on your goals.

Re: The art of over-engineering your side projects

#186

Post by rubenbe » Fri, Sep 01, 2017, 7:41 PM UTC

#Mistake 6: not writing tests.

In case I want to actually deliver a side-project, I usually write some basic tests. As such I can focus more on adding new (fun) features instead of hunting down regressions.

Re: The art of over-engineering your side projects

#187

Post by badminton1 » Fri, Sep 01, 2017, 7:43 PM UTC

Depends what the goal of the project is.

If the side project is for learning purposes then taking time to explore different approaches is OK.

If your side project goal is to build a product, then you should approach it as a more traditional project, budgeting your time, and focusing on time-sensitive tradeoffs, etc.

Re: The art of over-engineering your side projects

#188

Post by collinmanderson » Fri, Sep 01, 2017, 7:48 PM UTC

krptos wrote: post #180

czep wrote: post #176

The whole point of a side project is to over-engineer it! The thought of holding myself to deadlines and driving myself to "ship" is totally antithetical to the entire purpose of a hobby project. It's a welcome relief from the 9-to-5 constant necessity to cut corners and finish things without ever properly understanding them because there's no time. For my side projects, I actually want to go down rabbit holes. I wil…

Agreed. Generally, at any point of time I have two types of side projects going on: #1. One that I am very clear about how to implement. One that I want build, ship and grab users as fast as I can. The real goal of the project is to get it out their in the market and make a tiny dent in the universe ;) #2. One that I am not very clear about what it's gonna become. This one I want to take it slow. Experiment. Play wit…

Exactly. Side projects are often the best time to try out new tech. It's low risk.

Re: The art of over-engineering your side projects

#189

Post by 0xfaded » Fri, Sep 01, 2017, 7:57 PM UTC

czep wrote: post #176

The whole point of a side project is to over-engineer it! The thought of holding myself to deadlines and driving myself to "ship" is totally antithetical to the entire purpose of a hobby project. It's a welcome relief from the 9-to-5 constant necessity to cut corners and finish things without ever properly understanding them because there's no time. For my side projects, I actually want to go down rabbit holes. I wil…

Totally agree. I had a problem which required finding the minimum distance between an ellipse and a point. If that had been my day job I would have settled for Newton's method and hacked around the regions of bad convergence. Instead I spent a week developing to be what I still believe to be a novel numerical method that is much more stable over all regions.

Turns out I was wrong in some earlier maths, and the curve I wanted to find the distance to wasn't an ellipse. I was able to generalise the method for arbitrary curves, and now I've solved my problem!

Relevant blog post: http://wet-robots.ghost.io/simple-method-for-distance-to-ell...

Re: The art of over-engineering your side projects

#190

Post by jgable » Fri, Sep 01, 2017, 7:59 PM UTC

If you are doing hobby side projects that are solely for learning, then this article's advice is (mostly) not intended for you. If your goal is to explore new tech, try new approaches, go down rabbit holes, then by all means, go for it!

The author's use of "side project" is referring to "I'm building something outside of my day job that I hope will turn into a business." IF your goal is to make money, then the author's advice is spot on. Get to MVP. Get users. Listen to them. Iterate. All the advice we hear that applies to startups, applies here.