I would suggest taking all the stacks you are interested in end to end with automated testing and deployment. A static html page with consideration to aspects such as accessibility and time to first render is not necessarily trivial. Building out in different stacks from such a starting point would likely give you a valuable insight that is imho often overlooked.
Ask HN: Haven't worked for a while, best guide/advice to start a hobby project?
71–80 of 147 posts
Re: Ask HN: Haven't worked for a while, best guide/advice to start a hobby project?
#72If you find a old tutorial that you like, how about updating the tutorial for yourself and writing a new one as you figure it out? I learned React in 2018 from a tutorial made in 2016. The first thing I had to do was learn how to update Webpack from version 2 to 4. And while bits of the tutorial were outdated, a lot of it still applies.
Also, you aren't in control of what tech stack you use. I once moved 4000km from San Francisco to Washington DC to take a Ruby job for doing Selenium style automated testing on Android . Within a week I learned that Ruby approach wasn't going to work, and then I had to learn Java from scratch. Focus on learning how to complete tasks in the something, and worry less about living in a comfortable box labeled Full Stack Python Developer.
Re: Ask HN: Haven't worked for a while, best guide/advice to start a hobby project?
#73I would advise you to try to build something simple and small. It may become bigger afterwards. Ideally, this (initially) small project would scratch an itch.
That way, you have something immediately motivating, small and simple working soon so you don't get lost (lack of motivation, too much complexity) and overwhelmed, and you can still improve it later.
Re: Ask HN: Haven't worked for a while, best guide/advice to start a hobby project?
#74IMHO, the best stack is the one you are most familiar with.
Start with what you are most comfortable with and build from there.
The hardest part is coming up with a product that someone else would pay money for and then making that first sale.
btw, I love reading about tech stacks, This vs. That vs. Other blogs/articles - but honestly, it just a distracting hobby at best.
This is advice for bootstrapping. If you're trying to get a job, then yeah, focus on some specific stack and start learning it and building projects to put on github and blog about.
Re: Ask HN: Haven't worked for a while, best guide/advice to start a hobby project?
#75> I just want to work without feeling bored or overwhelmed.
Imagine being bored AND overwhelmed. Now that's something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.
But if you want to deploy "real code", I suggest choosing a programming language and building a "complete software".
1. Write a compiler for C ( or more realistically a subset of C )
2. Write a basic web server
3. Write a basic database ( RDBMs )
4. Write a basic browser
5. Write a basic chess engine with board ( if you are interested in AI topics )
6. Write a basic kernel ( or pieces of the kernel )
7. Write a basic debugger
Or if you graduated from a CS program, go look through your projects that you did and redo them or expand on them. Anyways, hope you find the project you are looking for and good luck.
Re: Ask HN: Haven't worked for a while, best guide/advice to start a hobby project?
#76I wouldn’t worry about the popular hipster stacks, but rather shoot for something productive and preferably slow moving. There is a reason things like Django or Ruby on Rails help people actually get things out the door. They come with a lot of batteries included, and while it may not be the hip (or even smartest) way to do things, that doesn’t really matter nearly as much as getting shit done. stacks like Flask or anything JS backend really, will make you write tons and tons of code that other frameworks will give you for free.
At the end of the day, not a single one of your users are going to care about you tech-stack.
I work in the public sector, and we have a lot of legacy stuff. One of our most popular web apps, that always scores really high in user saturation when we review/audit, runs ASP web-forms. That’s some really old shit, and you really shouldn’t pick that up in 2019, but the point is that no one who uses it cares.
Re: Ask HN: Haven't worked for a while, best guide/advice to start a hobby project?
#77If you are wanting to pick up Vue, choose node.js and start with the basic tutorial on setting up your project and project organization. Then do a tutorial on state management in Vue. At that point you should just get started on a project and stop doing tutorials until you run into something you don't understand. To get moving I like to pick a piece of functionality. In this case, login could be a good place to start…
the problem i have with this approach is it's reinventing the wheel. continuous integration, testing infra, rolling upgrades, deployment, logging, analytics on that logging, should all get solved problems I get out of the box in 2019
not surprised on the downvotes. Many devs will choose reinventing the wheel over using existing solutions. Their competitors will be on to release 7.9 while they're still trying to figure out how to ship version 0.2 without losing all the data from 0.1
Batteries included systems are a force multiplier. Engineers like writing code more than shipping. Go to any game jam and watch the teams using Unreal or Unity. Their progress dwarfs those that start from zero. While the teams using the full engines are adding game play features the teams starting from scratch are trying to figure out how to load 3D data or debug why their graphics aren't on the screen yet.
It's no different with apps. A good app framework or web app framework gets you to a working state ready to just work on what makes your app different. Starting from scratch means you're still trying to figure out how to get your DB backed up while the other devs are adding features.
Re: Ask HN: Haven't worked for a while, best guide/advice to start a hobby project?
#78Forget tech stacks. Just pick the simplest idea you can think of that you would actually use yourself , that seems to not be a complex software product. And do it! I can assure you that the simplest of products will not result in the simplest code / stack. It is important that you also personally want to use this thing, because when the going gets tough, you will stick with it.
And really finish it. Most learning is done while reducing bug count. Prototypes are easy in comparison.
I love this insight/observation.
Re: Ask HN: Haven't worked for a while, best guide/advice to start a hobby project?
#79It sounds like you need to figure out some basic goals first. If you're focused on finding a job, there are a lot of mid-size companies that could put you to work building small features and bug fixes and be perfectly happy. It might make more sense to find a company that uses the stack you are already familiar with. However out of date you are, there is a company still using that stack!
If you want to just have a hobby and expand your horizons, the most important thing is finding something FUN to do.
But forcing a hobby project in hopes of it leading to a job, if that's what you are trying, sounds like a recipe for disappointment.
Re: Ask HN: Haven't worked for a while, best guide/advice to start a hobby project?
#80I was in a very similar situation about a year ago.
What changed is that I took freelance contracts, on stacks that I had tried to use in side projects but failed to ship because of analysis paralysis. The simple fact that the project is not yours to drive, that income is ensured and that there are not many ties (less than an actual job) was an ideal framework for polishing my skills on some parts of the stack (React and general front-end design).
After that, going back to side projects felt much easier, some decisions which would have triggered anxiety attacks before seemed more obvious.
If you can't/don't want to go the freelance way, it may work with other work organisation ways, as long as you're not the (only) one who has to make the non-technical decisions, so you can focus on gaining experience dealing with the technical part of problem solving.