Don't pay attention to the negative nellies. Even these tiny "worthless" projects end up having value because they build a tool chest of skills and code snippets that make each subsequent project quicker and more sophisticated. Eventually you'll Frankenstein pieces of a dozen of these together into something big.
Six Months of Tiny Projects
61–70 of 151 posts
Re: Six Months of Tiny Projects
#62Job well done. If anything, more people should build their tiny projects in public and document their journey like you did. Dribbble used to be this place for designers, where a community came together to show work in progress and get feedback from one an other. (then it turned into a marketing platform). There isn't really something like that for tiny software projects. If there was, I would be checking in on a daily basis.
Re: Six Months of Tiny Projects
#63Don't pay attention to the negative nellies. Even these tiny "worthless" projects end up having value because they build a tool chest of skills and code snippets that make each subsequent project quicker and more sophisticated. Eventually you'll Frankenstein pieces of a dozen of these together into something big.
100% and aligns with my personal experiences as well. I've built countless things that never went anywhere or materialized.
Yet even today I continue to refer back to these old projects because I need to use again something I've built before.
Re: Six Months of Tiny Projects
#64From the author's description of the One Item Store:
> Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with the final product, I think its actually really cool. But building it.. it was just a bit boring. There were lots of bugs, and I started to get a bit burnt out thinking about the endless list of things required for a good online store builder.
https://tinyprojects.dev/projects/one_item_store
This is a fascinating observation. In a couple of weeks he's both built something from scratch and figured out that the work of doing it wasn't enjoyable. It takes some people years to get to that point.
To figure out what you want to do, you often have to sift through a lot of fool's gold - junk that looks appealing as an idea but isn't appealing as a part of your life. The tiny projects idea offers a way to accelerate that process.
But the key here is to finish. To have an end point in mind and then reach it. 20% completion may get you 80% of the functionality. But by god, getting that last 20% could be the hardest, grinding work you will ever do. It's going to be very difficult to finish unless it's aligned in some fundamental way with your life.
Re: Six Months of Tiny Projects
#65Really cool. Most people wouldnt post if they were 6 for 26 but honestly this is so insightful. I was planning on doing something similar with having 4 weeks to finish 4 upcoming projects. I knew they would probably take longer than the time allotted. This is helpful feedback.
Re: Six Months of Tiny Projects
#66Don't pay attention to the negative nellies. Even these tiny "worthless" projects end up having value because they build a tool chest of skills and code snippets that make each subsequent project quicker and more sophisticated. Eventually you'll Frankenstein pieces of a dozen of these together into something big.
Much of the stuff on which I tinker are useless/masochistic. But: "what I cannot create, I do not understand"!
Re: Six Months of Tiny Projects
#67> I believe there's a big advantage to this "micro-bet" approach of launching many tiny businesses These aren’t businesses. These are websites. Most people on HN can build a website. It takes some coding and some tech knowledge. Not everyone can build a business. That involves marketing, advertising, customer acquisition, cash flow management, legal, on and on. While what the author did was neat and fun for him, let’…
> let’s not pretend this is the path to a successful web business.
I disagree. There is no point in setting up legal and marketing and advertising if the business is not functional. This is a perfectly suitable path to a successful web business. Obviously he would need to expand on those areas you mentioned if he wanted to make one of these his career but this is the first step on that path.
Re: Six Months of Tiny Projects
#68I wish I could give this more than 1 upvote.
Pure initiative and positivity.
I love it!
Re: Six Months of Tiny Projects
#69Wow, OneItemStore is awesome. Any chance there's a way to peak at the source? I'm just starting to dip my toes in front-end anything and simple projects like OneItemStore still seem quite daunting.
Re: Six Months of Tiny Projects
#70I don't understand why the other comments are being so negative, this is awesome . There's a Jony Ive quote along the lines of "when you build something, you get the actual thing, but even more valuable is how you've grown and changed from building that thing. Best of luck on your future projects, great on you to make awesome stuff and grow as a person!
I think those negative commenters tend to miss what in my opinion is the most critical ingredient of what being a true "hacker" is – doing some things just because you want to, because you're having fun and because you want to see where it may lead. It breeds creativity and original ideas.
A silly idea in the beginning may turn out to not be so silly in the end.