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How to never complete anything

ewanvalentine.io

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Re: How to never complete anything

#61

Post by jondubois »

I've finished at least 3 major multi-year side projects. One of my open source projects was pretty successful but none of my side projects went anywhere business-wise.

Usually some well-funded competitor comes up later with the same idea and takes all the market.

My advice: Don't bother starting a side project unless it's really niche, easy to implement and you just want to make enough money to replace your own income (the market has to be small).

Unless you personally know people who have tons of money to invest in your side project, then it's a complete waste of time. It has to be people first.

9 out of 10 businesses fail and it has nothing to do with abilities, drive or persistence; it's only about luck.

I've met a 17 year old who built a wordpress website that generated $10K per month after just 6 months (though it already had tons of traffic in the first month) and couldn't write a single line of code. I've heard of hundreds of similar stories.

Some random person somewhere on planet earth randomly puts together an app because they think it's cool without any thought whatsoever; it blows up in popularity out of nowhere; then some smart engineers/people who actually understand the potential find out about it early enough and join up in exchange for a stake in the project; that's how actual smart people do business.

Re: How to never complete anything

#62

Post by ozim »

superasn wrote: post #53

I struggled through the same thing once I started with TDD. I've never had problems completing and shipping new products (a solo founder i launched 20 saas sites last year) but after reading dozens of documents about why TDD is an absolute must for any serious programmer my hubris got the best of me and I decided that I too will join the bandwagon. Boy, was i wrong.. Maybe for big teams it is a must but for soloprene…

I am feeling the same. I also bought illusion of superiority for doing it "right". Turns out for small team, SaaS application it is a lot better to "move fast and break things" of course there is "fix bugs even faster" that is missing. But anyway if you prioritise bugs before moving fast all goes well, if not then all TDD in the world with Uncle Bob and Martin Fowler will not help you.

Re: How to never complete anything

#64

Post by lubonay »

superasn wrote: post #53

I struggled through the same thing once I started with TDD. I've never had problems completing and shipping new products (a solo founder i launched 20 saas sites last year) but after reading dozens of documents about why TDD is an absolute must for any serious programmer my hubris got the best of me and I decided that I too will join the bandwagon. Boy, was i wrong.. Maybe for big teams it is a must but for soloprene…

That's an interesting take on TDD. It's supposed to be a tool that boosts your productivity, have you thought about why it decreased yours?

Re: How to never complete anything

#65

Post by kilon »

Suffering with dysthymia taught me many things. One of the things is that I may be fine working under pressure but my brain is not.

Side projects tend to be small , fast and enjoyable. This is the way the human brain works and is actually much more efficient than taking big steps.

Also make sure that your main goal is fun, if it is not, it will only get worse. Fun is the fuel of the brain. You cannot fight fun, because you cannot fight the brain. The brain always win.

Make your brain your ally and success will come. You are not your brain , your brain is a lot more than you.

Let me say once more , brain.

Brain

Oh and if you think your code will never sell , remember that fortunes have been built selling rubber bands for hair. There is always a way.

" use the brain Luke "

Re: How to never complete anything

#66

Post by exDM69 »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #55
exDM69 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in a similar situation to GP. I've done tons and tons of side projects but I rarely have anything to show for it. And why should I? I'm doing it mostly for the fun of coding, and striving to "ship" things takes some of the fun away. I most certainly do not want to start a start up from any of my side projects. Perhaps an established open source project at most. I do "release" my project, ie. push them to GitHub,…

I think you are doing great that you're releasing them into public, but your problem is you are not sharing it enough. I have many friends who release things like you. I'm not saying you are doing this but these guys just release and make no effort to promote them. They are afraid that they will get hurt if they try hard and no one still wants their thing. I understand this is totally valid fear and I have it too, bu…

Thanks for the feedback. Yes, I probably do share too little, and I get too discouraged when reddit downvotes my stuff to oblivion.

> Next time you build a product try to post it online everywhere like Reddit and Show HN. I'm sure you'll gain more confidence and experience from it.

Here's the problem, I never "build a product". My free time is not nearly enough to build a proper product that would a) be fun for me to write b) interesting enough for the general public.

Basically the best I can do is show a few screenshots or a few hundred lines of interesting code. In my experience, that's not enough to gain traction on Show HN or Reddit. Sometimes I share screenshots on IRC and do get some interesting follow-up discussions but that doesn't really help me to get these projects any further.

Maybe I should gather up the courage and start posting to reddit /r/gamedev "screenshot saturdays" threads for getting feedback and encouragement. Although I'm not really doing a game here.

But yeah, I mostly try to not think about the idea that I'll never finish these projects and have fun while hacking on them. I've been doing this for 20 years now and never really "shipped" anything, so I might as well stop worrying about finishing and just have fun.

Re: How to never complete anything

#68

Post by [deleted] »

superasn wrote: post #53

I struggled through the same thing once I started with TDD. I've never had problems completing and shipping new products (a solo founder i launched 20 saas sites last year) but after reading dozens of documents about why TDD is an absolute must for any serious programmer my hubris got the best of me and I decided that I too will join the bandwagon. Boy, was i wrong.. Maybe for big teams it is a must but for soloprene…

[deleted]

Re: How to never complete anything

#69

Post by mezod »

I keep finishing things. I do MVPs, but they are so simple that noone really cares, and after all the effort I put into them. motivation is gone. So while I'd completely agree with this, every day that goes by I disagree more.

Re: How to never complete anything

#70

Post by dooskington »

DizzyDoo wrote: post #49

I finished my side project a couple of years ago, released it, and then found I was able to quit my Python webdev job and go full time making video games. The key difference is that my project was a video game (this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwXl8lDrxn8 ) and that takes a lot of temptation to do what the OP is writing about, rewriting stuff in Haskell for example. The interesting bit when it comes to side…

Thanks for the inspiration. I just thought I'd say that your game is adorable.

I just recently released a tiny game as well (http://declanhopkins.com/asteroid-quest/), but it was only put on my website and I made it in a month. Regardless, it felt really good to get a game out after years of trying. I'm working on a new version of it now.

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