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A one-side-project-per-month challenge

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Re: A one-side-project-per-month challenge

#101

Post by ben_jones »

davidwparker wrote: post #18

I'm surprised by all the negative reactions. Of course you're not going to be making anything substantial in a month (most likely). Instead, you'll learn to actually finish (or semi-finish) projects and ship them regularly. This is very much like One Game a Month ( http://www.onegameamonth.com/ ). The idea is that write, learn, ship. It's nice. If you find that one of your projects takes off, or you really like it, t…

Isn't learning maintenance, support, refactoring, testing, etc., also valuable (especially for beginners)? I think it's in the first page of Site Reliability Engineering that the majority of time and costs are present here, which might suggest it is a more valuable job skill.

As a beginner I saw posts like this and felt like this was the way to go to learn as quickly and efficiently as possible. In retrospect I wish I had stuck with a single project, such as a comprehensive Django application, gotten a job in that domain to extend my skills, and then built from there.

Re: A one-side-project-per-month challenge

#102

Post by orthoganol »

The most important outcome for me when I did this (for 6 months) was my own webapp generating infrastructure, modules for common things with a whole lot of scripting to integrate 50-80% of all features (payments, chat, onboarding flows, landing page templates, dashboard templates, checkout flows, profile creation, etc.) depending on the app. Of course, building this infrastructure took about 4,5 months to put together and is an ongoing project, but was only possible after building 7 webapps in a row. I'm confident I could get a serious looking prototype for pretty much any webapp idea in less than a month, and depending on the app maybe less than a week.

(As an aside, if you're going to do this, you should also get Sketch and learn how to do graphics.)

I built all my infrastructure, modules, and scripts on top of Rails, and I may be biased, but I do credit my success with this to the ease, simplicity, and maturity of Rails. Popularity debates aside, is there any better framework for rapid prototyping than Rails?

Re: A one-side-project-per-month challenge

#103

Post by kLeeIsDead »

gravypod wrote: post #63
kolbe wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's certainly a good way to learn, though it's by no means the one and only best way. I personally think the best way is to go to MIT and do an EECS major. But we all have our different ways of approaching education, and I respect yours as much as I respect a person who learns based on building simple applications the can relate to and engage with better because they're more interesting.

No college education will teach you the material if you don't actually care. Many people hear "go take a CE degree' or "CS degree" and think "Now I'm a programmer" when they get out. They feel they know everything they need and as soon as they hit the real world reality drops on them like a sack of bricks. I'm at a "decent" university and currently in my 3xx level classes people don't know how to "do coding" and I'm…

One could dismiss your 7-phase plan with a similar argument.

Re: A one-side-project-per-month challenge

#104

Post by gravypod »

pmontra wrote: post #93
gravypod wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't the idea of doing one thing per month. It's the implementation in my mind. I don't like when people just wander around programming aimlessly. I also don't like when we drop standards to meet deadlines (I've got a looooong history of doing this and I hate it, check my github). I think completeness, reliableness, and also practicality should be king. You shouldn't be focused on pumping out something 2…

I upvoted you because you pinpoint a real problem and I understand why you're afraid of it. Still I don't agree that this problem should necessarily thwart the 1PPM Challege. A monthly project could be as small as a library you'd have to do for your real job, or a polished generalization of it (chec U. Check the first entry of the hall of fame: https://github.com/ggerhard/parsecal/blob/master/parsecal.rb is a 120 lin…

I do those often too but I do them because I need a library that does X or a service that does Y. Just building this doesn't make sense. Building things for some end goal makes sense.

Re: A one-side-project-per-month challenge

#105

Post by SEJeff »

orthoganol wrote: post #102

The most important outcome for me when I did this (for 6 months) was my own webapp generating infrastructure, modules for common things with a whole lot of scripting to integrate 50-80% of all features (payments, chat, onboarding flows, landing page templates, dashboard templates, checkout flows, profile creation, etc.) depending on the app. Of course, building this infrastructure took about 4,5 months to put togethe…

Well if you're a Python person, Django is amazing, and if you're a golang person Gin Gonic is amazing. Not everything webapp is Rails, although Rails is wonderful for prototypes. The only two very large rails sites I was ever consciously aware of were Twitter (now all java) and Groupon (now mostly node).

Re: A one-side-project-per-month challenge

#106

Post by 0xdeadbeefbabe »

SonicSoul wrote: post #91
karimf wrote: post #90

I remember quality vs. quantity story of ceramics class. [0] > The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the…

I love this story and I want it to be true. I've tried to trace it in the past but seems every source tells a story without any details. So not sure if this is a parable or actually happen. I believe that practice/iteration is the way to improve, it just seems a little too black and white In a similar vein on producing quantity of work before trying to be perfect, I always refer to Ira Glass's video The Gap. Must wat…

Makes you want to become a ceramics instructor just so you can have a primary source.

P.S.

I'd listen to Ira more if he didn't sound so annoying.

Re: A one-side-project-per-month challenge

#107

Post by nickpsecurity »

kLeeIsDead wrote: post #103
gravypod wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No college education will teach you the material if you don't actually care. Many people hear "go take a CE degree' or "CS degree" and think "Now I'm a programmer" when they get out. They feel they know everything they need and as soon as they hit the real world reality drops on them like a sack of bricks. I'm at a "decent" university and currently in my 3xx level classes people don't know how to "do coding" and I'm…

One could dismiss your 7-phase plan with a similar argument.

I doubt it given all the IT people, including HN readers, saying the college grads usually cant program worth anything. Whereas, the people who learned a creative, building skill by building straightforward or creative solutions to various problems often program better. Surprise!

The vast trove of empical data out there on activities like programming suggest that practice is main way people get better. There's also a sizeable anount of evidence saying ideal practice is a series of problems that increase in difficulty, a bit harder than before, and not insurmountable. Plus, learning techniques & observing examples from experienced professionals.

College isn't likely to teach you much programming skill at all. Now, programming practice + a college education in CompSci concepts can make for a programmer with more tools in the toolbox (taps head). It's not a substitute for repeated, informed practice of act itself.

Re: A one-side-project-per-month challenge

#108

Post by nickpsecurity »

gravypod wrote: post #56
ebbv wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't write code just to write code, write code to solve a problem you are having. What if the problem I'm having is that I don't know Haskell? It's totally fine to code exercises that don't serve any useful purpose. Just like it's fine for me to make terrible songs on the guitar that nobody would ever want to hear.

There is a different between prototype and project. If you're experimenting with features you're not making a project. If you're making a project (I hope) you're not experimenting with features. That should be done in a prototype.

There's overlap. Most FOSS or personal projects are prototypes for something built for fun or learning. Something can be a project without it needing success, money, or quality.

I believe Fred Brooks got famous pointing that out although it was unintentional for who he wrote about. ;)

Re: A one-side-project-per-month challenge

#109

Post by nickpsecurity »

strictfp wrote: post #77
joshux wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ken Thompson wrote Unix in a month.

Allegedly, it took him a month - https://www.princeton.edu/~hos/Mahoney/expotape.htm . But the idea had probably been growing on him for several years, while working on very similar projects. I think this actually supports my idea of letting ideas grow on you before executing them.

Further it's a tiny subset of MULTIC project that he worked on for some time. Some of MULTIC design ended up in UNIX. One can argue UNIX's design began as far back as that where he was doing something else but pivoted in new project with weaker hardware.

Re: A one-side-project-per-month challenge

#110

Post by nickpsecurity »

ensiferum wrote: post #20

My "side project" (or actually just one of them) has taken +10 years and thousands of hours. So I just wonder that what kind of things that produce value can you expect to create in 1 month (assuming you're putting like few hours every day) ?

MySpace went from idea to launch in 10 days per the Wikipedia article:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myspace

This project a month scheme is a crap shoot that will produce little of value in terms of tech released itself. A few valuables among a bunch of misses. Yet, decent ideas can be prototyped in a month or less with enough feedback to determibe if they're worth further action.

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