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Ask HN: Haven't worked for a while, best guide/advice to start a hobby project?

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Re: Ask HN: Haven't worked for a while, best guide/advice to start a hobby project?

#121
post #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 bro…

The only one of these that isn't going to be overwhelming is, maybe, the chess game.

Re: Ask HN: Haven't worked for a while, best guide/advice to start a hobby project?

#122
Go agile for yourself. Push little changes and then increment, making stuff better. Try to get a feature done on the first day, no matter how small it is. It feels very rewarding and motivates to continue. Little steps first, no matter the stack

Re: Ask HN: Haven't worked for a while, best guide/advice to start a hobby project?

#123
If your goal is to finish something you started, then pick the easiest stuff to learn that can produce the fastest results based on whatever you already know, even if what you know is "out of fashion".

Also, keep in mind that any tool you build can have very modest beginnings. It might not even have a GUI for your first release.

For example, I absolutely hated the Stripe Admin interface when it related to debugging stuff related to another project I was working on, so I wrote a really mickey mouse Node script to pull data from the Stripe API to make it easier to go through the data I needed while I was testing.

That script quickly turned into a simple Electron application that slapped a GUI around my original script. I hadn't really used Electron before and it gave me an excuse to learn it quickly (and reuse some existing UI code I wrote for other projects).

That Electron app then turned into a bigger Electron application that could access multiple APIs and data sources to collect data into local files and databases.

So if you can just pick one small thing that annoys you (I find that something annoying produces faster results than something interesting, ymmv), you can build something modest to address the immediate problem, and then iterate on it to build it into something bigger and better.

I could have just as easily turned my original script into a command line executable, an NPM or a small Dockerized web app container - do whatever is interesting, fun and useful for you.

Re: Ask HN: Haven't worked for a while, best guide/advice to start a hobby project?

#124

I 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…

Kind of curious how you just take freelance contracts?

Re: Ask HN: Haven't worked for a while, best guide/advice to start a hobby project?

#125

In my city, the programming unemployment rate is, like, 2%. If you haven't worked for awhile, it's because of your job hunting skills, not your tech stack. So, if having a job is reason you ask this, my answer is: read some books about job hunting. Don't worry about programming right now. But, and I think, more importantly, you are taking this way too seriously. Programming is fun. Write something fun. Me? I think No…

I’ll second this advice: have fun.

A few years ago I wrote a Python script that took a TSV tile as input and randomly selected a secret Santa matchup that wouldn’t put partners together and then email them their matches with a backup to a file so nobody would know the matches. I could find out, but didn’t have to know the list to get everyone set up.

It’s been a ton of fun improving on that year over year, and it was a great learning experience.

It definitely doesn’t have to be a serious endeavour.

That said, initiating an open source library that fills a previously unfilled need is also a great learning experience. Plus, other people get to see and critique your code in public—it makes you give some things a second thought.

And yes, also in both cases I agree: relax.

Re: Ask HN: Haven't worked for a while, best guide/advice to start a hobby project?

#126
Remix this. It is a base version of a popular MMO game. I am developing one of the better versions, with the game split into multiple files and with many engine improvements. If you make something impressive enough, I might invite you work on my game with me. https://glitch.com/~arras-template

Re: Ask HN: Haven't worked for a while, best guide/advice to start a hobby project?

#127
If you want a stack that won't force you to learn a billion things, I recommend elixir/Phoenix which will take you from hello world static up to javascript-free serverside rendering, deploying with ssl (no nginx/uwsgi necessary), and there are nice services for deploy like gigalixir. Documentation is great and comprehensive. It's also just about the most fun programming language I've ever encountered.

Good luck!

Re: Ask HN: Haven't worked for a while, best guide/advice to start a hobby project?

#128

If you want a stack that won't force you to learn a billion things, I recommend elixir/Phoenix which will take you from hello world static up to javascript-free serverside rendering, deploying with ssl (no nginx/uwsgi necessary), and there are nice services for deploy like gigalixir. Documentation is great and comprehensive. It's also just about the most fun programming language I've ever encountered. Good luck!

Elixir is my go-to default for any new web app. Another great deployment option is Render (founded by early Stripe dev, covered here: https://alchemist.camp/articles/elixir-releases-deployment-r...)

Re: Ask HN: Haven't worked for a while, best guide/advice to start a hobby project?

#129

I 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…

Doing freelance gigs is a good option to pick up new skills. If you can hit the ground running and cope up with the stress of learning and delivering at the same time, go for it.

Side note: I got into Python, and web scraping in particular, by picking up few freelance scraping gigs. Learned a lot in few days and this sparked my interest in Python.

Re: Ask HN: Haven't worked for a while, best guide/advice to start a hobby project?

#130
post #65
post #43

If I were you... 1. Start with something simpler & work on building up your fundamentals. Build momentum & confidence. 2. Recognize your struggle is part of the journey of learning. When you read and don't understand a word, you look it up. Take the time to fight through the abstraction & learn some core concepts when you don't know what something is. It's ok to get distracted & go down a mini rabbit hole. You may ne…

> Consider not using some frameworks to remove some of the magic. Learning a framework for a single project can sometimes mean a lot of learning abstractions that you'll never need again, and that didn't teach you any new core concepts. I would only learn tools like React or Vue if I intended to use them for work, which is what I did. If I'm doing a fun project, I write native code because it's more fun to figure stu…

For the most part I agree, but there are times where a framework can teach a valuable pattern that, even if you don't end up using it, expands your view of what's possible. Vue helped me understand events a lot better than I did before, and Redux is good to try at least once simply because it's such a different way of thinking about state mutation compared to what you'd usually come up with using just native code.
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