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Side projects

antirez.com

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51–60 of 243 posts

Re: Side projects

#51

Post by josephschmoe »

bglazer wrote: post #42

I'm working on a side project now that will eventually be an open source project. I think it could benefit a lot of people. My problem is that I have a full time job. When I come home at night I want to cook dinner, run, socialize, drink a beer with a friend, or work on an art project. I don't particularly want to configure Ansible or read the OpenVPN docs. At most I can get 3-5 hours of productive work per week on t…

The only way to do it is to have a job where you can complete the work in less than 5 hours a day. Preferably one that gives you the freedom to leave early/come in late so long as you're doing well on your work.

No one actually works 8 hours a day and comes home to work 4 hours sustainably. I couldn't see someone doing that for more than two months without getting burned out.

Re: Side projects

#52

Post by derekp7 »

Does anyone have any suggestions for promoting an open source project? I hate mentioning my side project on various forums, even if it is topical -- it makes me feel spammy. I thought about taking out some ads once I add in a few more "enterprise" type features, and was hoping that some open-source focused sites would have a discount on advertising open source projects using unsold ad inventory. I'd also like to find someone to work with that can point out deficiencies in the project web site, or general improvements/features I should add.

Re: Side projects

#53

Post by seiji »

bglazer wrote: post #42

I'm working on a side project now that will eventually be an open source project. I think it could benefit a lot of people. My problem is that I have a full time job. When I come home at night I want to cook dinner, run, socialize, drink a beer with a friend, or work on an art project. I don't particularly want to configure Ansible or read the OpenVPN docs. At most I can get 3-5 hours of productive work per week on t…

Please, step into my parlor of unsolicited advice for a moment...

will eventually be an open source project.

Lean Software people are right about one thing — you've gotta get software in front of users as quickly as possible. If the project timeline is "work for 6-8 months, then show people" it's possible you built an amazing thing only you know how to use and nobody else really wants.

Release early, release often.

My problem is that I have a full time job. When I come home at night

The simplest hack here: wake up earlier and use your first (and best) 2-3 productive brain hours on your project then go to work. You'll use your best performance (refreshed, alert, not tired) for your project while still not being fired.

I've considered quitting my job and diving into it for a few months. I have savings but this seems foolishly risky to me.

Yeah, that seldom works. Practical advice is: don't quit a job unless your side project is demanding an increasing amount of time and resources from customers/users (meaning: it's becoming successful). Non-practical advise is: screw work, if you're not happy, save money and do what you want.

If anyone has been in a similar situation, I would greatly appreciate advice.

The world isn't HN. You won't be an overnight success. You will fail. Nobody will use what you make. Or, you could be the next person the media starts comparing others against as a measure of unexpected success: "Is this new kid the next bglazer?"

Re: Side projects

#54

Post by tegeek »

bglazer wrote: post #42

I'm working on a side project now that will eventually be an open source project. I think it could benefit a lot of people. My problem is that I have a full time job. When I come home at night I want to cook dinner, run, socialize, drink a beer with a friend, or work on an art project. I don't particularly want to configure Ansible or read the OpenVPN docs. At most I can get 3-5 hours of productive work per week on t…

I've been in this situation for as long as I can think of. But lately I've found something which is working for the time being.

I don't use my car to commute to office. It takes 25 minutes via public transport (one way), so I use that time and build all the complex logic/data structure/algos in that time for my hobby project.

Cooking doesn't break my mental loop. So I keep thinking & solving things regarding my hobby project while cooking. (I also cook for my office lunch almost daily)

Most of the labour work (putting up CRUD forms or repeatable things, some graphics work etc) I do mostly on weekends when I don't have to use much brain but just keep moving things which are important.

Things are much better now than before. Even still my hobby project is slow moving but I can see it moving further.

Re: Side projects

#55

Post by caniszczyk »

seiji wrote: post #37
famousactress wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been broadly thinking about ways to take a bite out of this challenge. I've visited a couple of 1% for the planet[1] companies and been really inspired by what I've seen. In short, these companies pledge 1% of revenue to environmental causes. As the company scales it has a massive effect on their culture. I visited New Belgium Brewing (makers of Fat Tire) for instance, and a huge number of their employees are so…

I've visited a couple of 1% for the planet[1] companies and been really inspired by what I've seen. In short, these companies pledge 1% of revenue to environmental causes. Interesting approach, but I bet those companies also aren't high growth tech startups/companies. The only goal at a growing tech company is reduce costs, increase revenue. They aren't looking for new ways to pay for things they legally get for free…

I don't want to argue your point and you should read heavily into the "tragedy of the commons" problem that plagues many open source communities, but companies can give back in many ways, in terms of bug fixes, features and improvements to the projects they use (at least wise companies do).

In Twitter's case, we've also contributed to the Redis ecosystem via twemproxy: https://github.com/twitter/twemproxy

Twemproxy helps scale some of the traffic for the top websites in the world: https://github.com/twitter/twemproxy#users

Re: Side projects

#56

Post by bglazer »

rday wrote: post #47
bglazer wrote: post #42

I'm working on a side project now that will eventually be an open source project. I think it could benefit a lot of people. My problem is that I have a full time job. When I come home at night I want to cook dinner, run, socialize, drink a beer with a friend, or work on an art project. I don't particularly want to configure Ansible or read the OpenVPN docs. At most I can get 3-5 hours of productive work per week on t…

2 kids, 3 freelance gigs (full time at this), a couple startups behind me (1 pivoted away, 1 still running). I would love to get 5 hours for an OSX app I really want to build. You really do have to shut out the rest of your life if you want to make a serious run at a project. When you are cramming a side project into you life, you really can "work" 80 hour weeks. The irritability you're experiencing will probably jus…

Thanks. I don't even have kids yet. I'm still ~5 years from having little ones I'd imagine. Both of the people working with me on the project have kids, and I admire them (and you) tremendously for fitting everything in.

Re: Side projects

#58

Post by jimmaswell »

pjmlp wrote: post #46
hastly wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't taking money for extra features in desktop software the oldest trick in the book? Either way I don't think the problem is one of individual users not paying for their apps. I think the major problem is that of huge companies who get business value from the code use it to make money and give back nothing in return.

As proprietary software yes, but the moment you have something free with source code available, why should I pay you for it? This is why most successful desktop open source desktop software, actually live from another sources of funding, but it hardly created the same changes as with developer tools.

>but the moment you have something free with source code available, why should I pay you for it?

People bought the paid version of xchat for some reason. Don't assume the customer is that smart.

Re: Side projects

#59

Post by seiji »

caniszczyk wrote: post #55
seiji wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've visited a couple of 1% for the planet[1] companies and been really inspired by what I've seen. In short, these companies pledge 1% of revenue to environmental causes. Interesting approach, but I bet those companies also aren't high growth tech startups/companies. The only goal at a growing tech company is reduce costs, increase revenue. They aren't looking for new ways to pay for things they legally get for free…

I don't want to argue your point and you should read heavily into the "tragedy of the commons" problem that plagues many open source communities, but companies can give back in many ways, in terms of bug fixes, features and improvements to the projects they use (at least wise companies do). In Twitter's case, we've also contributed to the Redis ecosystem via twemproxy: https://github.com/twitter/twemproxy Twemproxy h…

can give back in many ways

The standard way society compensates persons for useful goods and services is by exchanging currency, not by bartering favors or by saying "look! we made a billion dollars using your software, here, have these free 40 lines of code as a bug fix. thx."

Unrelated note: every time I see these (needlessly?) optimized string compare statements, I fall out of my chair laughing and/or crying: https://github.com/twitter/twemproxy/blob/a36fdae2a8a3c166d9...

Re: Side projects

#60

Post by lukeholder »

graghav wrote: post #6
netcraft wrote: post #3

The site is not responsive for me, here is a cached copy: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

Yea, it is indeed not responsive. But I think Antirez is affording his time more on his "side projects" rather than making it responsive.

I think he means not 'responding', not complaining the website doesn't resize for different screen sizes (responsive).
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