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Lessons from a never-ending personal project

siddhesh.substack.com

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Re: Lessons from a never-ending personal project

#51

Post by Vetoquinol »

rudasn wrote: post #18

End of last year I had some time and started building a side project I've been thinking about for quite some time. I bought the domain and promised to myself that this time it will be different, this time I will publish. Months go by, with lots of refactoring, "core" features and no progress at all. Some weeks were most productive than others though and just last month there was something usable. So instead of doing…

Hey, sounds similar to my situation. :)

Just putting my software out there, on my barely visited site, lifted a weight of my shoulders. It's just one thing that I have put off of my mental shelve.

I even know there are some basic features missing, for what I think is needed in a product. However, it was good enough for its intended purpose. It's probably not even used by anyone else, but if it was and one would not be sufficiently pleased with the state of the software, they can contact me. Until then I've got my ease of mind in that regard.

For the curious, here's my website: https://softbit.info/pages/software?language=en-us

@parent poster: because I'm curious, what's your website?

Re: Lessons from a never-ending personal project

#52

Post by bayindirh »

adrium wrote: post #48
bayindirh wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, finishing personal projects is not impossible. I'm slowly building a set of tools for myself, and the servers I manage, and they're going well. One of them can be considered finished, the other one is almost done. The first one may get improved, but that's a later exercise.

Cool that you are seeing your progress! Improvements are an important aspect. They are simply changes to goals and the scope. In terms of finishing projects, it is crucial to define them and possibly define milestones in advance.

Yeah, you need to have a clear target and aim while starting. Milestones start to show themselves once you're experienced enough.

While we're at it, experience is also a must. Everybody starts from the bottom, and needs to work their way up, and I found kaizen is a great way to do it.

Re: Lessons from a never-ending personal project

#53

Post by avg_dev »

i'll be honest, i didn't really enjoy this article. i feel like there are people who are idealists and perfectionists and people who actually execute on ideas. i am not saying one can not change. certainly in my life i have been in the first category for many years or decades at a stretch. but i am at a productive period in my life and i write every day, i write music every day, i write code every day, i accomplish many other things through the course of a day. is everything i do perfect? no: not one thing i do is perfect. perfection is just some ideal or mental standard but it is not something that i think can ever be achieved except in very limited contexts, like maybe a game of tetris.

i remember some years ago reflecting back on some software project that had gone well. in my head, it was a beautiful finished object that i'd created using the tools and frameworks available to me. it was perfect and flawless.

then i went back and read the code and saw so many TODOs and things that i would have accomplished had i only had more time. and i never did get a chance to finish those TODOs, but the project launched successfully and generated a lot of revenue.

Re: Lessons from a never-ending personal project

#55

Post by hutzlibu »

rtpg wrote: post #27

4th point about writing stuff down leads to another fun exercise. If you care about an idea but don't want to spend time doing the thing, write up a plan for how to do it. Then consider that to be your work product, and never look at the file again. Good way to get something out of your system, and maybe 3 years later you open it back up and go for it.

Oh yes, always document everything!

Thinking is real work and unless you are an extreme exception, after some time you will forget even the greatest ideas!

Re: Lessons from a never-ending personal project

#56

Post by matthewfelgate »

>Because if writing a stupid essay that requires zero research, zero external coordination, and zero dollars, only my time and focus, is this difficult to finish, I’m astounded that anything ever gets done in the world in the first place, and that too well. >Finishing anything is a miracle in and of itself. A huge shoutout to anyone who’s ever done anything to completion at all.

Ha so true!! Perhaps I am just getting old.

Re: Lessons from a never-ending personal project

#57

Post by rwieruch »

It's not only personal projects. I am in a similar stage where I feel kinda the same for a SaaS (Cloud Camping) where I am the sole developer. I have been working on this "MVP" for over 9 months now, we have our first customers (fortunately), but I underestimated the surface area of the domain (PMS - property management system) which seems like a never ending story. If you decide to create a PMS, customers are used to all the features that come with such a software: Third-Party Integrations for Booking Engines, Email Templates, Newsletter, i18n support for DB entities, hardware integrations (Electricity, Barriers, ...). It's difficult to draw a line for MVP or finished product.

Re: Lessons from a never-ending personal project

#58

Post by balder1991 »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #13

> Unfortunately, writing a compiler creates a living thing. > I didn't realize this going into it. I wasn't asking for a baby. > It was a complete surprise to me, after 20-odd years of industry experience, that even writing a simple interpreter would produce a lifetime of work. https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/06/rich-programmer-foo...

This text serves as a wake up call for me. I didn’t take a Compilers class in college but I always wanted to learn how compilers work. Now that I’m done with college I finally have time to start this project. Also the “extending graduation for several years because of working full time” hits home. Thanks for posting this!

Re: Lessons from a never-ending personal project

#59

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

fmbb wrote: post #49
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #39

> Finishing anything is a miracle in and of itself. A huge shoutout to anyone who’s ever done anything to completion at all. He is writing about art (creative writing), as opposed to commercial product. Art is fairly inward-focused, and its goals can be a lot “fuzzier” than product. I was an artist, in my Yute. At one time, I wanted to actually make a living from it. But artists finish, all the time. Some, treat thei…

I think people could be more clear in their language here. Finishing a project is not the same thing as finishing the artifact the project is about. A project to build a house can be completed so that you can sell the house. But someone buys it and continues to build on the house, so the house was not finished. This applies not only to art I think. It’s a bit of a semantic discussion though, because I guess completin…

Yes and no. Milestones get finished, and even continuing stories are composed of chapters.

BTW: Here's a couple of the things I did, back when: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34654770

That second painting is shown in an "unfinished" state. In a later version, I added a woman walking down the path, towards the door. That was the one I sold.

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