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I was stuck on a side project for 5 years – how I finished it (2020)

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Re: I was stuck on a side project for 5 years – how I finished it (2020)

#21

Post by necovek »

shard wrote: post #7

Not sure if the OP is the author, or if the author will read this, but I ate the shed, and at first found it delightful, but then got an annoying bit stuck in my teeth. The Guide first says "The results of the spell are supposed to be independent." And I took that at face value, since I figured this is an educational page rather than a page of brain teasers and trick questions. But then when it asks "in my last 100 c…

Yeah, another problem is that none of the answers offered at that question is really "right" according to the adventure. I also find it contradictory. If you did "cast a spell" a 100 times, and recorded that sequence, and then asked what's the likelihood of getting any particular value after getting exactly that sequence, one could argue similarly that there's only a 1/2*100 chance of the previous sequence happening (yet it just did for the author), so something must be wrong with it. Basically, they are saying that some of outputs are not equally likely, and I am now seriously confused.

This is such an early point to attempt to highlight features in purportedly random behaviour that is not really random.

It didn't annoy me, it just made me quit at that point, especially as I was already battling the spell terminology.

Re: I was stuck on a side project for 5 years – how I finished it (2020)

#22

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

gwbas1c wrote: post #20

The shed is a poor analogy. (Here's the link to the story about the shed that took 9 years to build: https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/czg04y/shed_is_finally... ) Basically, the guy wasn't a perfectionist. He didn't build and tear down 5 different sheds. It just wasn't a priority. It was really important to him that he DIY his shed, but "life" happened. Every time he set aside a weekend or some funds for the shed…

Huh, that could be me except it's been like 9 years and the shed isn't finished yet.

> It just wasn't a priority

Pretty much this!

Re: I was stuck on a side project for 5 years – how I finished it (2020)

#23

Post by giomasce »

shard wrote: post #7

Not sure if the OP is the author, or if the author will read this, but I ate the shed, and at first found it delightful, but then got an annoying bit stuck in my teeth. The Guide first says "The results of the spell are supposed to be independent." And I took that at face value, since I figured this is an educational page rather than a page of brain teasers and trick questions. But then when it asks "in my last 100 c…

My problem with that question is that it seems to imply that of something has a very small probability to happen, then it cannot really happen. This is false. The probability of me generating my precise GPG or writing this exact comment were ridiculously small before these events happened, and still they happened.

Or, from another point of view, it's worthless to ask what is the probability of something that has already happened. Once something has happened (i.e., if you constrain to that thing having happened) its probability is one, full stop. You have to ask a question before running the experiment.

Re: I was stuck on a side project for 5 years – how I finished it (2020)

#24

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

elmers-glue wrote: post #19

I’ve made two side projects so far. The first was a visual JVM profiler that was very complex and educational/intellectually satisfying to build but when I finished it I had little interest or know-how or capital to invest in growing + marketing it. The second one was as simplest as I could possibly make it. I had basically 2 hours per weekend in 2021 (kids & all) and I rigorously stuck within my estimated scope. I w…

...so what was the app?

Re: I was stuck on a side project for 5 years – how I finished it (2020)

#25

Post by necovek »

jerf wrote: post #11
shard wrote: post #7

Not sure if the OP is the author, or if the author will read this, but I ate the shed, and at first found it delightful, but then got an annoying bit stuck in my teeth. The Guide first says "The results of the spell are supposed to be independent." And I took that at face value, since I figured this is an educational page rather than a page of brain teasers and trick questions. But then when it asks "in my last 100 c…

I think that's a really hard problem to phrase correctly no matter what you do, because no matter what you do, you're swimming upstream against almost the entire mathematical education that person has had up to that point. Up to that point the answer to "Susie has 37.8 cookies and wants to split them evenly weighted by the body mass of the 17 people in her class, how many cookies does each person get?" has never been…

The focus of the question should not be on the independence of the probability, at the very least: you are setting a responder up for failure, and that rarely leads to satisfaction. Perhaps the only problem is with the given response: if it was "Yes, BUT..."

If you expect the "why the hell does she want to do that", you can't ask that in a quiz form. Why the hell are we collecting potions: I couldn't care less, right? And then you suspend your disbelief, and then suddenly, "uh-uh, that's too unlikely, you should have questioned your assumptions."

Re: I was stuck on a side project for 5 years – how I finished it (2020)

#26

Post by cco »

dang wrote: post #14

Submitted title was "Building Sheds: 5 years of polishing, and only 3 points on HN". Please don't do that—it's against the site guidelines: " Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Funny, because I think that title is better than the one that they chose.

Re: I was stuck on a side project for 5 years – how I finished it (2020)

#27

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

sigmonsays wrote: post #13

i just built a shed. I wanna know in depth how they built it to take 9 years. Nobody? =P

Not OP, but I started my shed (I think) 8 years ago.

Year 1: dig, place and level footings. Put down floor joists: it's just a little 8x10 shed, so they're 2x4's

Year 2: find some scrap 3/4" plywood left over from another project for a floor. Realize that it'll just get wet and rot if placed, so leave it where it is. Instead frame and raise the walls.

Year 3: realize that you should have built the south wall a bit higher so the roof can slope, shrug and figure out a way to frame the roof so there's a small slope anyway.

Year 4: (I think). Find leftover metal siding and nail it in place for a roof. Now that we have a roof, put the plywood down, but don't nail it down since without walls, it could still get wet and rot.

Year 4.5: realize that the proto-shed is usable as is, and start throwing crap in there that needs to be out of the way, but can take getting wet.

Years 5 - present. Look at the shed and realize that with less than a day's work you could finish it but don't have the motivation to go find more siding, drive over there, drive back and then nail it up. Maybe next summer...

Re: I was stuck on a side project for 5 years – how I finished it (2020)

#28

Post by donatj »

I've got a side project I've been working on for over 12 years, on and off. About a year in, a very popular competitor popped up, and it was roughly as good as what I was working on so I gave up - for a year or two.

Then they closed their API and had some PR drama so I started up again. Rewrote the whole thing. I've got it about 90% of the way there, and I was getting ready to open it up for a public beta and suddenly GDPR happened.

I don't even want names if I can avoid it, but the core data of the product could be construed to be PII, which means I want to get some sort of encryption on it before I open it… And I just haven't come up with a way to do that that doesn't involve rewriting the whole thing.

So right now, I've got a project I spent 12 years on that only I am using - and using heavily - and love. I generally put a couple hours a week into it.

If anything it's been a fun testbed for keeping my frontend skills up to snuff, especially as I've moved from full-stack to backend in my professional career over the last 5 years.

Re: I was stuck on a side project for 5 years – how I finished it (2020)

#29

Post by NicoJuicy »

donatj wrote: post #28

I've got a side project I've been working on for over 12 years, on and off. About a year in, a very popular competitor popped up, and it was roughly as good as what I was working on so I gave up - for a year or two. Then they closed their API and had some PR drama so I started up again. Rewrote the whole thing. I've got it about 90% of the way there, and I was getting ready to open it up for a public beta and suddenl…

Cloud DB with encrypted columns is not enough?

( Other options exist)

Re: I was stuck on a side project for 5 years – how I finished it (2020)

#30

Post by donatj »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #29
donatj wrote: post #28

I've got a side project I've been working on for over 12 years, on and off. About a year in, a very popular competitor popped up, and it was roughly as good as what I was working on so I gave up - for a year or two. Then they closed their API and had some PR drama so I started up again. Rewrote the whole thing. I've got it about 90% of the way there, and I was getting ready to open it up for a public beta and suddenl…

Cloud DB with encrypted columns is not enough? ( Other options exist)

If I'm going to do it, I want it in a way where it's encrypted per-user, using something not stored in the database like a client side hash of their password or something.

I don't want the possibility a miswritten SELECT potentially revealing anything.

I don't want to be able to read their data, at all.

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