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I spent two years launching tiny projects

tinyprojects.dev

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Re: I spent two years launching tiny projects

#111

Post by criddell »

acuozzo wrote: post #104
criddell wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a paradox, but I've found that my best ideas now come from building other ideas. Building and failing and building and failing might be a faster way of getting to something great than vetting, vetting, vetting, building, vetting, vetting building...

You have to, at the very least, vet the problem domain first though, no? Building hundreds of AviSynth filters won't bring in a cent.

Part of this is learning from the “failures”. If you are building AviSynth filter #742, then maybe you are skipping that step.

On the other hand, if you are having fun and learning something along the way, who cares?

Re: I spent two years launching tiny projects

#112

Post by alin23 »

I started doing the same but with macOS apps: https://lowtechguys.com

Reading about the author's projects in the past is actually what inspired me to do it.

I used Windows for a long time before as a power user (living my life in FarManager and WinAPI), then switched to Ubuntu with i3.

After finally switching to the Mac, I loved its simplicity and how it freed my mind from micro-managing the system, but I also noticed its shortcomings and how some things were better on Windows/Linux.

Nowadays I'm making small apps to overcome those macOS shortcomings, and help others find their carefree macOS setup where the system doesn't get in the way of real work.

And it's going pretty well! I've also shared the source of the framework [1] I'm using for these apps, so that I don't have to constantly reimplement payments, licensing [2], SwiftUI styles/components and utility functions on each new project.

[1] https://github.com/FuzzyIdeas/Lowtech [2] https://github.com/FuzzyIdeas/LowtechPro

Re: I spent two years launching tiny projects

#113

Post by Melatonic »

How do you get people interested in your projects both from a consumer and production standpoint? Basically I am wondering what the best ways you have found to SELL whatever project you are working on (even if say the project is technically free to the end user) and also how do you sell someone else on collaborating with you?

Re: I spent two years launching tiny projects

#114

Post by SCUSKU »

kokanee wrote: post #63
softwarebeware wrote: post #50

As someone who has written down probably 100's of little ideas over the years, and never built even a single one of them ... I applaud you

My problem is a bit different, and I'm curious if others can relate. I constantly have a project in the works, but once I solve the interesting technical hurdles and prove that the concept works, I suddenly think of a "better idea" and never actually release anything. I've been in this cycle for the better part of a decade now. But let me tell you, if my current project works out, I'll never have to work a W2 job aga…

100% this. I have become better about not nixing projects I am working on when I hit technical walls recently. My strategy has basically become to just do the bare minimum to test whether an idea is good or not and if it sucks I will at least have fulfilled my intellectual curiosity and then I can stop being distracted by that idea.

For example, I am currently working on a project to send personalized slack messages in bulk. But I then became really interested in the idea of automatic podcast transcription using GPT-3. So I ended up just one night banging out a prototype on jupyter notebook and it turns out the auto transcription was pretty bad and expensive, but at least I know now. So now I don't feel as bad and I can focus on the boring aspects of building this slack plugin, like accepting payments.

Re: I spent two years launching tiny projects

#115

Post by drewzero1 »

soperj wrote: post #21
ohlookabird wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With coding, I often find Antoine de Saint-Exupéry helping me to limit myself: "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

I feel like this quote is why I can't have a removable battery, a headphone jack and an sd card in a new phone.

I suppose that might be one reading, though IMO the battery, jack, and card slot have just been replaced by more bells and whistles like more/fancier cameras, biometric sensors, NFC, and other gobbledygook that was more important to someone than being able to plug into the cassette adapter in my car. Not exactly what I think of when I hear "nothing left to take away."

Re: I spent two years launching tiny projects

#117

Post by SoftTalker »

drieddust wrote: post #22

While I want to execute the idea I am always put off by the essential administrative stuff such as user management, payment gateway linking, subscription management. Are there any open source plug and play options available out there which can take away this tedious but important work?

Try to think about a way your product (or at least a minimal version of it) could work without "user management." Sounds counterintuitive but sometimes it is a requirement that has never really been thought about, just assumed to be necessary.

Re: I spent two years launching tiny projects

#118

Post by drewzero1 »

I remember seeing snormal on here a while ago. I played around with it briefly because the idea was refreshing, but ended up not coming back for a while because the scrolling was really painful in Firefox on Android.

The premise really resonates with me. I've often struggled with maintaining a presence on any social media, and barely ever post because everything'_s normal_.

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