81–90 of 103 posts
One such simple project for me was https://kvak.io . A weekend crafting for a need I had and couldn't find anyone offering - a simple online notepad where I can share the note by just copying the url and the 'sharee' continues writing. The process itself is indeed very fulfilling and joyful.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless you're living in a place that really heavily regulates the web, I don't think you need to fear having user accounts in hobby projects. I've built dozens if not hundreds of hobby projects that had accounts. This includes a blog I ran from 2005-2017, flash games in 2010-2011, an ear-trainer for recognizing relative pitches, a couple of apps that do things with photos, half a dozen language learning apps and all…
It is pretty easy to run into truble with user accounts due to privacy regulations like Europe's GDPR. This stuff is definitly not fun in a side project.
One such simple project for me was https://kvak.io . A weekend crafting for a need I had and couldn't find anyone offering - a simple online notepad where I can share the note by just copying the url and the 'sharee' continues writing. The process itself is indeed very fulfilling and joyful.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless you're living in a place that really heavily regulates the web, I don't think you need to fear having user accounts in hobby projects. I've built dozens if not hundreds of hobby projects that had accounts. This includes a blog I ran from 2005-2017, flash games in 2010-2011, an ear-trainer for recognizing relative pitches, a couple of apps that do things with photos, half a dozen language learning apps and all…
It is pretty easy to run into truble with user accounts due to privacy regulations like Europe's GDPR. This stuff is definitly not fun in a side project.
Even in China, which is definitely hard mode for established businesses, many hobby projects stay informal and aren't really cracked down on. My first tech job was at a startup in Beijing 11 years ago and we went through some serious hassle to get an ICP and initially just targeted the foreign market due to the lower compliance overhead. That said, none of my personal sites or games were ever blocked, as far as I know of. I knew some friends that built apps on WeChat and got fairly far before formalizing.
One tip I've picked up from experience: avoid projects that have user accounts. If your project has user accounts, you'll get users who you have to take responsibility for. Then it's not a side-project any more, it's a part-time job. These days I much prefer side projects which have no user accounts at all (like https://www.niche-museums.com/ ) or that are open source tools where the end user installs and uses the so…
Last year I participated in the advent of code challenges. I remember a puzzle from day 16 [1], which took an afternoon or more . The idea is really great, however it seems quite hard to solve interesting problems in this short timeframe. [1]: https://adventofcode.com/2021/day/16
If you did get good at this, all you’ve done is trained yourself to trust your own code over libraries. My suspicion is that experiences like this are the supervillain origin story for people with NIH syndrome.
I like the ethos behind this post; I've been struggling to finish projects for years, I get desmotivated, jump into another thing, don't finish it, come back after months now lost again, advance a little bit, drop it after a weekend, repeat, etc. I will try to use the framework presented here but I'm not sure exactly how to apply it, for example the project I've been meaning to finish is what I call a very dumb compi…
There used to be a compilers course by Alex Aiken available online which I've found very helpful in getting started. But apparently they've limited access since. https://online.stanford.edu/courses/soe-ycscs1-compilers Maybe you can find a mirror of a previous version somewhere.
I think a compiler is a nice project because you can start with a very small language, then keep growing it and learn something along the way. Not a one-weekend project, though.
This sounds like it about doing projects for the sake of saying they're completed ? My projects tend to be because I want something from them (explore a new toolset; have a working dish disposal; make my car able to play audio from bluetooth; not have to care about network filtering on random wifi aps; get a history of just how bad the temperature difference between rooms at home really is). They're "done" when eithe…
So this is a technique for people who start a lot of things to work in such a way that they can feel better about what they do
Probably works for a certain class of projects, but not for many. For example just recently Zas editor[0] was on HN whose developer spent >1 year building it. How do you restrict that to a weekend? Similarly the creator of bun.sh[1] (Javascript build+runtime) has been working 80 hour weeks on it for 6+ months. Ambitious projects like those _will_ take time. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30952084 [1] https:…
How do I compile I GUI app for Mac? How do I create a plaintext editor? How do I expose a Go parser?
Continue with each feature.
One tip I've picked up from experience: avoid projects that have user accounts. If your project has user accounts, you'll get users who you have to take responsibility for. Then it's not a side-project any more, it's a part-time job. These days I much prefer side projects which have no user accounts at all (like https://www.niche-museums.com/ ) or that are open source tools where the end user installs and uses the so…