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It's OK to abandon your side-project (2024)

robbowen.digital

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Re: It's OK to abandon your side-project (2024)

#41

Post by gilleain »

keiferski wrote: post #23
embedding-shape wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do kind of the opposite, every week every project needs to justify why I should keep doing it and what I learned recently, and if I can't come up with any good reasons or good learnings, I abandon it.

That's a good idea too, but I think the wrap-up postmortem helps me clear my mind a bit. Personally I feel like having a formal declaration of "it's finished, for now at least" takes a weight off my mind.

Also it can give a feeling that it was not a waste of time - lessons learned, what you would do next time on other projects, other avenues to look into.

For years I wrote a technical blog intended just for my own reference, as the small effort required to write it up, create images and so on felt good. It was also a good point to think about what I had _actually_ done - sometimes this made me realise small mistakes or missing details.

Re: It's OK to abandon your side-project (2024)

#45

Post by senko »

wrongcards wrote: post #29

I've been running my side project - free ecards that are wrong for every occasion - ( https://wrongcards.com ) for eighteen years. I felt like the internet needed something like that, back in 2008. Back then, it was a tribute to the 90s era of terrible, awful ecards websites, about which I had become oddly nostalgic. It was also semi-intentionally a terrible idea from a SEO perspective (ecause, like, search engines a…

I just spent 15 minutes I don't have, browsing your site and chuckling.

Thank you! :-)

(PS. maybe just freeze it so it's up but don't spend / spend minimal time on maintenance, if that's possible?)

(PPS. maybe integrate with some of those "send a postcard" sites so that people can also send actual physical cards using your designs? or buy them (high-res PDF for printing)

Re: It's OK to abandon your side-project (2024)

#46

Post by embedding-shape »

gilleain wrote: post #41
keiferski wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good idea too, but I think the wrap-up postmortem helps me clear my mind a bit. Personally I feel like having a formal declaration of "it's finished, for now at least" takes a weight off my mind.

Also it can give a feeling that it was not a waste of time - lessons learned, what you would do next time on other projects, other avenues to look into. For years I wrote a technical blog intended just for my own reference, as the small effort required to write it up, create images and so on felt good. It was also a good point to think about what I had _actually_ done - sometimes this made me realise small mistakes o…

> Also it can give a feeling that it was not a waste of time

Another way to avoid that feeling is changing your mindset around what's "abandoned" vs "completed". "Completed" doesn't have to mean "published project and made it FOSS" or whatever, it could literally be "Scratched an itch to play around with library X's APIs" or something, or just "Wanted to see if it was possible".

Nowdays I "complete" every single of my side-projects, some of them in some hours, because "completed" no longer has to mean "it's public and people can use it", mentally this feels a lot better :)

Re: It's OK to abandon your side-project (2024)

#47

Post by wrongcards »

senko wrote: post #45
wrongcards wrote: post #29

I've been running my side project - free ecards that are wrong for every occasion - ( https://wrongcards.com ) for eighteen years. I felt like the internet needed something like that, back in 2008. Back then, it was a tribute to the 90s era of terrible, awful ecards websites, about which I had become oddly nostalgic. It was also semi-intentionally a terrible idea from a SEO perspective (ecause, like, search engines a…

I just spent 15 minutes I don't have, browsing your site and chuckling. Thank you! :-) (PS. maybe just freeze it so it's up but don't spend / spend minimal time on maintenance, if that's possible?) (PPS. maybe integrate with some of those "send a postcard" sites so that people can also send actual physical cards using your designs? or buy them (high-res PDF for printing)

Hey, that's lovely, and I'm glad.

I did simplify the ecard send/receive mechanism - there's been four or five different iterations of the app, and validating emails was nightmarish. As of a few months ago I just let people create and copy-paste 'links with messages', which has made my life considerably easier.

I did print 1000 boxes of postcards years ago - in about 2012, I think. they turned out looking really beautiful, in print. It's a funny story, actually, because I put them on Amazon and forgot all about them, entirely (I was working a full-time job at the time at a university). I still have a few hundred boxes left I've been giving away to people.

I've had a few people contact me in the interest of facilitating that service, but they seemed kinda slimey. I think you're right; I should probably set up print-on-demand. But again, side projects, huh?!

Re: It's OK to abandon your side-project (2024)

#48

Post by jillesvangurp »

Don't stress out over these things. Some people garden. Some people collect stamps. Other people tinker with cars. And some people tinker with software. That's all a side project is. I make a point of going outside on a weekend and get some time away from my keyboard as well. There's nothing like a good break from coding to get some fresh inspiration and ideas.

If you are doing this for your own entertainment and learning, take it as far as pleases you. I have plenty of half finished things. I like picking one and doing some 'gardening' when I feel like it. Sometimes when I have low energy and I need to snap out of that, I just start doing simple stuff. Maybe I'll update dependencies on a project I haven't touched for ages. Or there's a bit of documentation that annoys me and I fix it. I'll see what needs doing, can use improving, etc.

There's a system to my madness where sometimes I find a use for disconnected bits of software in a business context. And sometimes that never happens and that's fine too. I abandon things as well. Mostly if I don't enjoy working on something, it just gets less and less of my attention. I have well over a hundred github projects at this point. Only a few of them have any traction at all. But once in a while I'll get a random issue report or PR on one that I haven't touched in years and that's all it takes for me to pick up where I left off.

Re: It's OK to abandon your side-project (2024)

#49

Post by freedomben »

raphinou wrote: post #21

I have such a project I just can't shut down: https://myowndb.com/ I started it 20 years ago, with ruby on rails. I neglected it but then decided to rewrite it in F# and publish it as open source ( https://gitlab.com/myowndb/myowndb ). There are very few users, some from many years ago, all non paying. None gave any feedback I asked during the rewrite. I should have shut it down years ago, but I just can't take the s…

Hey that looks pretty neat! I sort of miss MS Access sometimes, and this feels like it might fill the same niche. The star count also just went up 50% :-D

Does it use Sqlite or something on the backend, or is it all it's own? Do you know if it runs on Linux?

Edit: My answers based on a quick review (please correct if I'm wrong). It uses Postgres (cool!) and definitely runs on Linux (I see Dockerfile in there). UI is through the browser?

Re: It's OK to abandon your side-project (2024)

#50

Post by mauvehaus »

anArbitraryOne wrote: post #43

What if your side-project has a side-project?

That's run of the mill project recursion applied to side projects. It wonder how much side project abandonment is due to it. Kudos to the author of TFA for not going and building a novel tech stack and actually learning the Latvian cases!
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