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Ups and downs of a side project

jereze.com

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Re: Ups and downs of a side project

#51

Post by prmph »

xnorswap wrote: post #7
gdcbe wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You made the tower yourself, no? Not to sound snarky but by making sure that (1) you do not lock yourself into any dependency and (2) you keep the use of dependencies to a minimal you do prevent most of that pain? At least that is my opinion. As a temporary workaround (sometimes permanent) I opt for a fork, which when kept to the bare minimum is usually not more then a minor annoyance. That’s at least my experience…

That's a really bad attitude. I ran into a bug in NPM that prevented our CI builds running entirely. That NPM bug still isn't fixed (despite the bug having minor security implications), but there's no way I'm re-writing everything to not use NPM, it would be absurd, nor is it sensible to fork NPM and invest time into fixing the bug. I ended up putting in effort to work around the bug entirely, but it was only coincid…

You could try pnpm or yarn?

Re: Ups and downs of a side project

#52

Post by didgetmaster »

>The thing is, as a coder, you will be more attracted by generic product. Generalizing is more elegant, and if, like me, you like to solve problems, you will want to try to figure out a bigger problem than your initial scope.

This is a major issue with my side project (https://www.Didgets.com) which is a general-purpose data management system. It started off as a 'file system replacement' where you could use it to store tens or hundreds of millions of files; put tags on each of them; and then do lightning fast searches to find subsets of them.

I discovered that the tags I invented could also be used as columns in a columnar database table. So I went off inventing a way to build fast relational tables that were good for both transactions and analytics. I also discovered that the system can be used to build logging frameworks, indexing services, configuration management, and backup mechanisms.

The problem is that I don't have the resources to fully build out each feature set, so it does a dozen things (some of them really well) but none of them are a finely tuned, polished product yet.

Re: Ups and downs of a side project

#53

Post by pards »

verelo wrote: post #32
SuoDuanDao wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what are you working on if you don't mind me asking?

It's a tool (focused on the Toronto market only for now) that provides detailed reports on the history of a building / area for realtors and/or buyers (and i guess maybe renters or self sellers). Trying to bring together a lot of open data sources such a building permit history for the property in question and the neighbours, nearby proposed development activity, schools, hospital, police, fire service locations, lea…

This sounds similar to what Core Logic [0] provides to realtors in Australia. The majority of realtors use it, and I'm sure they pay a lot more than $300/year

[0] https://www.corelogic.com.au

Re: Ups and downs of a side project

#54

Post by verelo »

pards wrote: post #53
verelo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a tool (focused on the Toronto market only for now) that provides detailed reports on the history of a building / area for realtors and/or buyers (and i guess maybe renters or self sellers). Trying to bring together a lot of open data sources such a building permit history for the property in question and the neighbours, nearby proposed development activity, schools, hospital, police, fire service locations, lea…

This sounds similar to what Core Logic [0] provides to realtors in Australia. The majority of realtors use it, and I'm sure they pay a lot more than $300/year [0] https://www.corelogic.com.au

Interesting. Some of this data isn’t easy to access for me in Canada but yep, they’re in a similar space.

Funny because I’m from Australia, but never transacted property over there.

Re: Ups and downs of a side project

#55

Post by SuoDuanDao »

verelo wrote: post #32
SuoDuanDao wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what are you working on if you don't mind me asking?

It's a tool (focused on the Toronto market only for now) that provides detailed reports on the history of a building / area for realtors and/or buyers (and i guess maybe renters or self sellers). Trying to bring together a lot of open data sources such a building permit history for the property in question and the neighbours, nearby proposed development activity, schools, hospital, police, fire service locations, lea…

Interesting. Not sure you're looking for well-meaning suggestions from uninformed strangers, but have you thought about narrowing down even more to the tax-sale market? Tax sales can be profitable but hard to access because there's often a minefield of liens, cleanup costs, etc. in the kind of data you're compiling.

Re: Ups and downs of a side project

#56

Post by brtkdotse »

verelo wrote: post #12

I really appreciate reading this, i lay in bed this morning feeling all the doubts the author is experiencing. I’ve spent about 3 months on a new product, i spent all day yesterday trying to figure out how to sell it effectively. I met with sales reps i worked with in the past, wrote really thoughtful messages to prospects…No one has bitten yet. I’ve been here before, this is certainly not my first startup, but man i…

> I’ve spent about 3 months on a new product, i spent all day yesterday trying to figure out how to sell it effectively.

If it's one thing I've learned from following bootstrappers and trying to start my own SaaS - it's that you should spend 3 months selling and 1 day building.

Re: Ups and downs of a side project

#58

Post by ThinkBeat »

I am oldish now. Reading through the comment threads I dont think my opinion is popular here today but I feel sad when people spend so much focus on making money and to make big money as an outcome.

There are millions of people out there who have to hustle every miniute of their lives to feed their family, have some shelter and if they are lucky some minior access to healthcare. Each day is a make it or break it moment.

Most programmers and other in the tech space get paid a lot of money in their day jobs. A lot of money compared to most professions. That is a huge win. Almost like being minor royalty.

If you are so lucky. You can put food in the fridge, pay rent, get around, eat out some, healthcare (A much bigger problem in the US, than other western nations true)

You have been blessed even though you did not deserve it and you might not believe it.

Slow down. Try to enjoy life outside of money and outside scheming to make money. and outside of tech. Greed is not a good raison d’être.

Hundreds of thousands of people will make more money than you. They will have better toys, bigger cars, nicer apartments, bigger wealth.

Humans look up.

My boss has a brand new Tesla, he has a nice house. Bossman look up to a neighbor who has a huge house and 2 Porches. Neighbor looks up to his cousin wh ....... [1]

Fuck that.

If you look down, you can see how bloody fortunate you are. Be a bit more humble. A bit more grateful, and try to enjoy where you are now.

[1] These are examples from my era. People may have different status symbols they look at. Maybe you dont want a car, and you get dont care what others have there will be different status symbols you look up at.

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