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Ask HN: Failed project you spent 15 hours/week for 5 years on?

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Re: Ask HN: Failed project you spent 15 hours/week for 5 years on?

#61

Post by rbanffy »

audiometry wrote: post #56
rbanffy wrote: post #17

My most successful project, by far, is a font. As a software engineer, I find that slightly amusing. None of my software projects got anywhere near its traction. Except, maybe, an Emacs plugin made as a joke that adds IBM Selectric typewriter sounds to your text editor.

What is the font and its story?

It’s https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font. It’s a terminal font based on 70’s IBM terminals. It’s been used in art projects and on the cover of a magazine, and it’s offered packaged in the Debian and Ubuntu repos.

Re: Ask HN: Failed project you spent 15 hours/week for 5 years on?

#62

Post by lhnz »

rglover wrote: post #32
lhnz wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You only truly "fail" when you quit. If you can make the necessary sacrifices to struggle through the dark days, your chances of succeeding increase greatly. People give up when they realise that continuing a grind will require then to sacrifice more meaningful opportunities they have. It's not always good to keep going. Sometimes you're throwing your life away.

> It's not always good to keep going. Sometimes you're throwing your life away. That's a conditioned response. "Throwing your life away" is subjective. Edit: https://nav.al/kapil <-- Worth listening to.

That's not a conditioned response! I also once believed the same as you, and I have friends that are endlessly bootstrapping and spending 60+ hours a week on their startups. They are renters, that don't have much money or a family or relationship, and they pump every freelancing job they do into their new ideas.

There's no law that says this will pay off. They might end up in their mid forties with very little wealth or they might end up very rich.

These aren't conditioned responses. Grit isn't enough here. You need to make the right choice for your self depending on your own dreams and the likelihood of attaining them.

My point is, if you decide you want a family, you will need to stop pouring all of your money into your projects, as it will be difficult for everybody if you're in one bedroom of a shared house...

Re: Ask HN: Failed project you spent 15 hours/week for 5 years on?

#63

Post by danielmarkbruce »

MarcelOlsz wrote: post #2

I've spent the last decade doing this. Building up my savings, draining them on an idea. I put in 40+ per week for a couple years on my last startup in the real estate space. Poached some top level VP's from the biggest firm in our country, but we ran through our capital too quickly due to too many pivots and licensing costs, I could only do no salary for so long, tough when your rent is $2.5k/mo. Now I am back at my…

Maybe pick an industry? That way the fails add up to deep knowledge?

Re: Ask HN: Failed project you spent 15 hours/week for 5 years on?

#64

Post by dave_sid »

mtnGoat wrote: post #33
erjiang wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only a "failure" if you look at your net worth, right? It sounds like you have the experience, knowledge, and even resume of someone much older than 28. If you had instead spent ages 22-28 on a PhD, you'd still have no net worth, but people wouldn't see that as a failure.

im not so sure... IMHO if you spent 20+years in school and are up to your ears in debt and cant find a decent job... thats a big failure to me.

If they do manage to be their own boss then that’s a huge success. Worth the effort it it pays off.

Re: Ask HN: Failed project you spent 15 hours/week for 5 years on?

#65

Post by atemerev »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #9

I poured 40-60 hours a week for a decade into a programming language that we open source and then flopped: https://gosu-lang.github.io/ I was paid during that time, and the language is still heavily used internally, but it never got picked up by the outside world and Kotlin arriving on the scene killed any chance it had. Was fun though.

Hmm, I have heard about it once or twice, as a minor “Java improvement” language like Ceylon.

It is, however, next to impossible to popularize a new programming language without dedicated evangelists (e.g. hardcore fans who spend a lot of time on programmers forums and social networks, arguing for the language).

Re: Ask HN: Failed project you spent 15 hours/week for 5 years on?

#67

Post by high_byte »

jabo wrote: post #27

Context: I'm the other co-founder of Typesense, mentioned in the article you linked. Kishore and I have worked together on about 12 different side projects over the course of 13 years, and we've tried to adopt this mindset of consistency, persistence and long timeframes for each. A few of these projects got good traction, but most of them didn't do well (at least revenue-wise). But here's the thing: working on all th…

well said!

Re: Ask HN: Failed project you spent 15 hours/week for 5 years on?

#68

Post by tluyben2 »

smackeyacky wrote: post #58
tluyben2 wrote: post #22

It is how I work usually for the past 30+ years: I spread my time between 3-4 projects always and most are my own. I work on them for 3-6 years per project until something hooks some success or does nothing at all. Most fail, I had a few successful ones that made enough to live a nice life with a family and a few turned into serious companies. I suspect I will keep doing this until the end of my life: it is a lot of…

Do you have a metric for when you give up on something? I'm 4 years into something that is a grind of epic proportions and wondering whether I should just shelve it and move on.

My usual metric is 3 years: only when I feel it has legs after that I continue a little bit. And by legs I mean that it has interested investors, breaks even or someone want to buy the company.

I have a project now that I started over 3 years ago and was completely dead until 2.5 years in about. An investor contacted me and said this is perfect timing (yeah, well, it was not 3 years ago... but it is how things go) and now he wants to jump full in: he started sending money as a token of trust.

Re: Ask HN: Failed project you spent 15 hours/week for 5 years on?

#69

Post by recursivedoubts »

atemerev wrote: post #65
recursivedoubts wrote: post #9

I poured 40-60 hours a week for a decade into a programming language that we open source and then flopped: https://gosu-lang.github.io/ I was paid during that time, and the language is still heavily used internally, but it never got picked up by the outside world and Kotlin arriving on the scene killed any chance it had. Was fun though.

Hmm, I have heard about it once or twice, as a minor “Java improvement” language like Ceylon. It is, however, next to impossible to popularize a new programming language without dedicated evangelists (e.g. hardcore fans who spend a lot of time on programmers forums and social networks, arguing for the language).

yep, we were naive about that

on the other hand, it was early on in the JVM language boom and so things like JRuby and Clojure were growing in popularity, and we thought we might have a shot

at least it was fun

there were some interesting technical aspects to the language, such as the open type system[1], which lives on in spirit in Manifold[2].

[1] - https://guidewiredevelopment.wordpress.com/2010/11/18/gosus-...

[2] - http://manifold.systems/

Re: Ask HN: Failed project you spent 15 hours/week for 5 years on?

#70

Post by rglover »

lhnz wrote: post #62
rglover wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not always good to keep going. Sometimes you're throwing your life away. That's a conditioned response. "Throwing your life away" is subjective. Edit: https://nav.al/kapil <-- Worth listening to.

That's not a conditioned response! I also once believed the same as you, and I have friends that are endlessly bootstrapping and spending 60+ hours a week on their startups. They are renters, that don't have much money or a family or relationship, and they pump every freelancing job they do into their new ideas. There's no law that says this will pay off. They might end up in their mid forties with very little wealth…

It's not about laws or prescriptions. If you really want to do it, you'll figure it out.

Most people don't really want to do it, so they don't figure it out.

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