Finish your projects

In general, I like the empathetic tone of the article, and I appreciate that it addresses an emotional facet of software development. But nevertheless it triggers some little part of me w/regard to telling people what they should or should not do, or what they may be proud of.

I worry for someone who reads "You also have a duty to your future self to release the project" and "...you tell yourself that you are the kind of person who ships" and takes that to mean "if you don't release it, you're failing yourself" and "you're the wrong kind of person if you don't ship."

On an emotional level, I think it's better to start from a place of (unconditional!) self-love, and go from there, rather than beating yourself up because you're not meeting some blogger's expectations of how you should act.

And just to be clear: I don't think the author means it that way, but that's one way it can come across, to some people, in some states-of-mind.

I've generally found it more useful to phrase things like this in terms of "I" rather than "you". As in: "I had X experience when I did Y" rather than "you should do Y, so that you will feel X." It's a common mis-step in giving well-meaning advice, I find.

EDIT: Also, I'm sure there are plenty of people who really do benefit from advice being given in this more pointed way, and I realize it's a bit onerous to always write and phrase things for a "safest common denominator," but I think it's worth keeping in mind, at least.

I think this is important: finish your project in bigger context where your project is a piece needed in higher level picture. Don't finish project just to finish it. This attitude solves problem of motivation, because you naturally finish the project without forcing yourself. Masons don't lay bricks to have bricks laid down, they want to build a house. Of course it much more complex than that, some people are just not types of makers and "finishing projects" is not their cup of tea.

To latch onto that analogy, the point of homework is to make sure you learn the topic.

So, if it weren't mandatory, handing it in isn't all that important as long as you're doing it. Indeed, in grad school, there was very little graded homework and most was just assigned with solutions given for anyone who wanted to do it.

So, to bring the overly stretched analogy back to projects, I think you shouldn't feel like you need to "finish" something if it meets enough of the goals you set for yourself.

Eg I spent months working on projects like custom OS's and game engines. But as the nature of those kinds of projects is to have endless room for growth, I just drew the line at some point that I had learned and done enough and could just drop them in whatever potentially buggy state they were in.

Ha. I don't work for GitHub tho! I'm just a guy writing about my feelings

lol (monkey eyes, looks away)