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Finishing a side project

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Re: Finishing a side project

#111

Post by jlengrand »

One thing I learnt in a thread on HN a long time ago and that I use a lot to just keep working on side projects : Make sure you stop half way through a sentence / line of code.

Don't finish that article, or don't stop with code that compiles.

The reason is stupid simple : It just removes all the blockers of starting working on the project again. It removes the initial step, which is usually the hardest. Come in, finish that function and make it compile. Boum, now you're in the flow just keep going :).

Also, it's ok to stop side projects if they're not fun any more. Stop beating yourself :). You most likely learnt in the process, which was the original goal.

EDIT : Not meant to be taken as a silver bullet at all! Just a small trick to keep a 'live thread' between you and the project.

Re: Finishing a side project

#112

Post by danjac »

Darkstryder wrote: post #105

In the past five years, I've had several side-projects that were never "finished" in the literal sense, but taught me important things that helped me ace job interviews, getting me two jobs that I probably wouldn't have got otherwise. At some point I had a mental shift and decided that a side-project that doesn't get finished but gets me a new job is a huge success and not a failure. This had a big impact in me conti…

That's an interesting data point: personally I've never found side projects to have any effect on getting a job - recruiters and interviewers don't care in the slightest about your side project, Github profile or whatever and will just "follow the script". I just see side projects as interesting for their own sake and a way of learning about things you'll never get the chance to in your day job because it's not in the company's wheelhouse.

Re: Finishing a side project

#113

Post by maltelandwehr »

jlengrand wrote: post #111

One thing I learnt in a thread on HN a long time ago and that I use a lot to just keep working on side projects : Make sure you stop half way through a sentence / line of code. Don't finish that article, or don't stop with code that compiles. The reason is stupid simple : It just removes all the blockers of starting working on the project again. It removes the initial step, which is usually the hardest. Come in, fini…

This is especially true for writing!

For coding, I have found it only works for me when I have some failing tests. And unfinished line of code with more than a trivial thing missing, might actually slow me down.

Re: Finishing a side project

#114

Post by jlengrand »

maltelandwehr wrote: post #113
jlengrand wrote: post #111

One thing I learnt in a thread on HN a long time ago and that I use a lot to just keep working on side projects : Make sure you stop half way through a sentence / line of code. Don't finish that article, or don't stop with code that compiles. The reason is stupid simple : It just removes all the blockers of starting working on the project again. It removes the initial step, which is usually the hardest. Come in, fini…

This is especially true for writing! For coding, I have found it only works for me when I have some failing tests. And unfinished line of code with more than a trivial thing missing, might actually slow me down.

Are you assuming I am writing tests on any of my projects ? o_0 haha.

I like it for writing a lot indeed, because It keeps a thread in the back of my head that just wants to refine the idea further and come back to the draft.

Re: Finishing a side project

#115

Post by Darkstryder »

danjac wrote: post #112
Darkstryder wrote: post #105

In the past five years, I've had several side-projects that were never "finished" in the literal sense, but taught me important things that helped me ace job interviews, getting me two jobs that I probably wouldn't have got otherwise. At some point I had a mental shift and decided that a side-project that doesn't get finished but gets me a new job is a huge success and not a failure. This had a big impact in me conti…

That's an interesting data point: personally I've never found side projects to have any effect on getting a job - recruiters and interviewers don't care in the slightest about your side project, Github profile or whatever and will just "follow the script". I just see side projects as interesting for their own sake and a way of learning about things you'll never get the chance to in your day job because it's not in th…

I should stress that it is not the side-projects themselves that got me the jobs but the knowledge I acquired while working on them.

I usually do side-projects on topics that interests me, and usually apply on jobs that also interests me, and I just hope for the two to converge: at some point the interviewer will ask a question about a technical topic I never worked on professionally, but on which I have intimate knowledge thanks to those side-projects.

And then I'll be able to give an interesting answer while my previous jobs and education would not have prepared me for that question.

Re: Finishing a side project

#116

Post by LaundroMat »

My problem is not finishing something. Because the context around a project always evolves, you can't really say it's ever finished. I can (now) easily get to the phase where a project is ready to accept users (which is what I suppose is meant with "finished").

My biggest problem is finding the energy to market the thing/find users outside of the ones I built it for.

I've worked on a tool for product managers (I built it for myself first) that attracts about 5 to 10 users every month (it's free).

I released a tool for a lab manager friend of mine. I wanted it to attract more users than his (enthousiast) staff, but I can't be bothered marketing the thing (except a lame post on LinkedIn).

And so on... Now I'm building a niche appointment planner, hoping I can get other sites to do the user recruitment for me (through affiliate marketing).

So it's never been about getting the project in a state where it's ready to accept user feedback but more about finding the motivation to go and market it.

Re: Finishing a side project

#117

Post by GrumpyNl »

LaundroMat wrote: post #116

My problem is not finishing something. Because the context around a project always evolves, you can't really say it's ever finished. I can (now) easily get to the phase where a project is ready to accept users (which is what I suppose is meant with "finished"). My biggest problem is finding the energy to market the thing/find users outside of the ones I built it for. I've worked on a tool for product managers (I buil…

That doesnt sound as a side project but as a main project.

Re: Finishing a side project

#118

Post by OhRoG9th »

jlengrand wrote: post #111

One thing I learnt in a thread on HN a long time ago and that I use a lot to just keep working on side projects : Make sure you stop half way through a sentence / line of code. Don't finish that article, or don't stop with code that compiles. The reason is stupid simple : It just removes all the blockers of starting working on the project again. It removes the initial step, which is usually the hardest. Come in, fini…

I've been using most of my free time in the last decade to write side projects (for my own use, not published ones), and I strongly agree with the author that small steps are key.

Although, reading your comment, I suspect that as often, generalizing this idea is probably an error, and I don't doubt what you describe works best for you and the people you mention from the HN thread (and thus, probably many others).

For me, product design (both professionally and for side projects) is all about dividing features. Any time I think about a feature, it doesn't take a long thinking time to realize there are several features in there. I keep dividing until I can't anymore, and then I prioritize them in a todo list, parts of a "feature" often ending up after parts of an other feature, because it turns out they're not that important.

This helped me a lot for side projects, because I've reached a point where the unit of time for writing a feature is the hour (only on side projects, the unit of time is the day, professionally, because there always are more complicated needs).

And this is what does it for me for side projects : knowing that when I start something, I'll have something useful in return at the end of my session, and having a clearly organized global todo list of all tasks for all my side projects. When I open my todo list each day, I'm generally excited thinking of what the topmost item will allow me to do, and it's only a few hours away!

Re: Finishing a side project

#119

Post by danjac »

Darkstryder wrote: post #115
danjac wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting data point: personally I've never found side projects to have any effect on getting a job - recruiters and interviewers don't care in the slightest about your side project, Github profile or whatever and will just "follow the script". I just see side projects as interesting for their own sake and a way of learning about things you'll never get the chance to in your day job because it's not in th…

I should stress that it is not the side-projects themselves that got me the jobs but the knowledge I acquired while working on them. I usually do side-projects on topics that interests me, and usually apply on jobs that also interests me, and I just hope for the two to converge: at some point the interviewer will ask a question about a technical topic I never worked on professionally, but on which I have intimate kno…

Sure, I think we're in agreement here. The $dayJob is usually too limited in scope - you can't just drop in, say, GraphQL into a project because you want to learn it (and nor should you). Plus in a large enough company backend devs are kept away from touching frontend code and vice versa. Companies usually don't like to invest in training either so side projects are often the only outlet developers have to learn and explore.

Re: Finishing a side project

#120

Post by ciconia »

I have a side project that I've been working on for more than 2 years already, and it still hasn't reached the point where I'm ready to show it to people.

What I find useful to do when I get stuck with some problem that I don't have the time or the patience to solve, is to leave it alone and just let my subconscious continue digesting the issues. A few days, weeks or months later, the solution would spontaneously reveal itself, and with it new drive and inspiration will fill me, and then I'll dive right back to the work.

I've also had other side projects that I pursued for a while and then abandoned because I had other more pressing or interesting stuff to work on. They're still there on GitHub if I ever feel like revisiting them.

In other words, don't worry about it. Sometimes it fizzles out, sometimes it sustains itself.

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