Excellent advice.
And starting with #0 adds street cred.
What eight years of side projects have taught me (2019)
51–60 of 91 posts
Re: What eight years of side projects have taught me (2019)
#52For those who feel like a side project needs to be successful or reach a certain amount of revenue/lines of code/users to be successful in your eyes: Don't feel pressured. In my career (granted not a long one, but made it to C-Level in a startup after about 5-7 years) I've always used them to show my interest and learning skill to do something. It didn't matter whether it had 1 user or 1 million, employers were alway…
I've had the same experience, but just wanted to sum this up as it's advice I've given to others: make side projects public.
This doesn't even have to be fancy, even just a list of projects on your own personal site with links to Github and what you learned/what you hoped to accomplish.
Having the public list is also good as many times the projects might be done at the behest of a company or you don't have a good way to "show" them so it's your chance to write them up and get "credit" for your work on them.
Re: What eight years of side projects have taught me (2019)
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
YMMV, but when I interview as an employer is ask a candidate to talk me through a project they really enjoyed. It can be work-based or a side-project, doesn't matter as long as it's something they really enjoyed. We then use that to explore what it was that excited them, the technology decisions they made, etc.[1] If your answer was an unfinished project, I'd want to know why they were unfinished. Did you give up on…
Follow-up: Where do you think my time would be better spent preparing for a new job? Making a sideproject I can show off or doing interview puzzles?
I had side project and nobody cared when I was looking for job. Like, it did not seemed to matter or do difference.
One hiring manager let me talk about it more, but in retrospect he was basically nice to me and let me talk about it because I wanted to.
Re: What eight years of side projects have taught me (2019)
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are unfinished projects worth anything to an prospective employer? I have plenty of projects I attempted before getting busy with real life. Should I show those when asked for a Github?
YMMV, but when I interview as an employer is ask a candidate to talk me through a project they really enjoyed. It can be work-based or a side-project, doesn't matter as long as it's something they really enjoyed. We then use that to explore what it was that excited them, the technology decisions they made, etc.[1] If your answer was an unfinished project, I'd want to know why they were unfinished. Did you give up on…
> That last one is not alway a pejorative statement, BTW. Some people are great at figuring out the big stuff and then need others to help them execute on the detail (think about architects or producers). Others however, just give up at the first obstacle they meet, and if I get that impression from a candidate I'd want to dig into it a bit as it's possibly a yellow flag.
The most common reason for me to ditch a side project is that I've gained what satisfaction is to be gained from making it. For example, I want to try or learn some new thing and convince myself I can do it. Once I'm far enough to know how it works (even if it's not really doing much yet), I'm satisfied and I can move on to the next interesting thing.
That's why I have basically no side projects to show off..
Re: What eight years of side projects have taught me (2019)
#55For those who feel like a side project needs to be successful or reach a certain amount of revenue/lines of code/users to be successful in your eyes: Don't feel pressured. In my career (granted not a long one, but made it to C-Level in a startup after about 5-7 years) I've always used them to show my interest and learning skill to do something. It didn't matter whether it had 1 user or 1 million, employers were alway…
One thing that's always helped me in interviews is to bring these side projects - physically - into the interview. Often it's customary to not bring anything but your resume. I typically bring a print-out of my projects, some GitHub code, some documentation samples, and maybe even my laptop with projects pre-opened so that we have things to talk about.
I always qualify this as "just in case you are interested", but they are almost always interested. Nobody wants to talk about a bland resume; they'd rather talk about the things you found a genuine interest in.
Re: What eight years of side projects have taught me (2019)
#56> Lesson 0: Programming in a void is worthless
I wouldn't say worthless, but there's a world of difference whenever you have a practical use (or someone else's use). It forces your brain to focus and go broader at the same time.
Re: What eight years of side projects have taught me (2019)
#57I am stuck in the same loop of trying to find the best way to organise my thoughts. My best attempt was using Dropbox Paper. They have a great editing/writing experience, but eventually it got to a stage where the page load times took too long. I'm currently trying out vimwiki. Let's see how that goes.
I've let go of my addiction to finding the best tool and settled on Emacs+Org-Mode (specifically with Spacemacs so I can use Vim keybindings). Over the years I've tried so many tools, languages, workflows, and the only ones that stuck were the ones that were boring but timeless. I've not just been gravitating toward OrgMode for all my note keeping, but I've also gotten more and more into bash for much of my stuff. Th…
> bash/emacs+orgmode/emacs+tramp/emacs+?
You wanted to say "Magit" in the last one :-)
Why do you say you're limited to text-only things? Org supports links, images, code blocks, spreadsheet-like tables and such. For me the experience of migrating to Emacs+Org was more of a liberating type.
Re: What eight years of side projects have taught me (2019)
#58I completely can relate to your experiences (wrote a post about side projects [1]). Strongly agree with "Programming in a void is worthless". Learning a new language shouldn't be the purpose to start a new project, it should just be a tool to get a side project going. And the goal of the side project will make you force you to use it, so it's a great way to learn. It can sometimes be a struggle to learn how to achiev…
In my experience "Programming in a void is worthless" was the main factor to put the language aside and lose interest. Only learning for projects drove me all along through Node, Golang, C# and counting.
I went pretty wide on languages too. I kinda wish I spent that time learning more useful things though. It's certainly nice to be exposed to different language concepts, but I think there's too much conceptual overlap between e.g. C# and Golang for there to be that much benefit from it.
If I had to pick languages that changed my thinking the most, they would probably be: Haskell, Erlang, Clojure, Prolog, and R. Unique languages like Erlang/Elixir and Prolog can be "10x" languages - they were written for specific purposes and if your problem fits that purpose it will be much easier to solve than in most other languages.
Re: What eight years of side projects have taught me (2019)
#59I am stuck in the same loop of trying to find the best way to organise my thoughts. My best attempt was using Dropbox Paper. They have a great editing/writing experience, but eventually it got to a stage where the page load times took too long. I'm currently trying out vimwiki. Let's see how that goes.
I had the same, but recently I just created my own personal site for my notes. The main benefit that I did not expect is that, in theory, everyone can see it. This causes me to put more work into a note:
* To make sure that it actually is correct. Multiple times I discovered when reading the documentation that I only had guessed it sort of right and that there were some key bits of info that I had missed.
* To make sure that it is complete and that it gives just enough background information for those who want to use it without being in the exact situation that I was in. I.e. for myself in a couple of weeks/months.
There are more benefits. Like being able to structure it exactly the way you like it with links, tags, search, etc. And that you can show it casually to potential employers, who won't read a letter of it, but they can see that you actually put in work and understand some topics. This last point can also work for friends and colleagues.
Re: What eight years of side projects have taught me (2019)
#60Side projects are great. Not just for learning technology, but also for playing around with technology you already know. It can be fun to built something without the 'overhead' of Sprints, standups, team meetings, design documents,.. :)
Could not agree more. I kept playing with my side project of news aggregation [1] for almost three years and used only for my own consumption. Then few friends wanted to also use the site and then it just organically grew. And this project still is a side project although lot more people use it.
[1] https://embit.ca