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Finish your projects

github.com

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Re: Finish your projects

#71

Post by aarondf »

shit_game wrote: post #62

As "inspirational" as this comes across, I can't help but feel a bit cynical in that this is _Github_ publishing this. You know, the company that famously built an AI product using the projects hosted on Github... Personal development and growth and feel-good-iness aside, there is a tremendous conflict of interest present when Github is encouraging its userbase to create working software projects when those software…

GitHub did publish it, but they didn't write it! I (the author) don't work at GitHub, and they don't tell me what to write. The brief they give me is basically "write something a developer would like" and off I go. Not sure if that changes your mind, but at least now you know how it worked behind the scenes!

Re: Finish your projects

#72

Post by kazinator »

I don't agree with the part about starting a new project with no legacy code being easy; starting a new project with no old code at all can be paralyzing.

The best is a project that is never finished, with great legacy code that makes it easy to do new things all the time, such that you're relieved you have it there.

:)

Re: Finish your projects

#73

Post by shit_game »

jahewson wrote: post #66
shit_game wrote: post #62

As "inspirational" as this comes across, I can't help but feel a bit cynical in that this is _Github_ publishing this. You know, the company that famously built an AI product using the projects hosted on Github... Personal development and growth and feel-good-iness aside, there is a tremendous conflict of interest present when Github is encouraging its userbase to create working software projects when those software…

Is this not an alignment of interests?

I suppose that depends on ones opinion regarding the Copilot situation.

Re: Finish your projects

#74

Post by Aeolun »

aarondf wrote: post #33
BeetleB wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have a duty to your past self to release the project. It’s a way to honor your work and sacrifice. All the time spent on the project is time you could have spent on something else. That time was not without cost. Ouch! I strongly encourage you to read up and understand the sunk cost fallacy. In general, do not let past efforts be the guide for future decisions. I've quit a lot of projects in my life. And it was…

Glad you still liked it, despite the strong complaints! I hear your feedback, but I don't fully agree with all of it. I do understand the sunk cost fallacy quite well, but thinking about the time committed can be a useful framing to help push past the fear of releasing or drudgery of the last 10%. > If you tell yourself that every time you don't release a project, the fix is not to release the project, but to stop te…

Of course I do not ship a lot of personal projects. That’s why they’re personal.

I have enough to ship in my day job. Not shipping my personal projects is my prerogative.

Re: Finish your projects

#75

Post by kapperchino »

jhp123 wrote: post #30

To take the contrary position: give up. Your project will take far longer than you think, and you will get much less from it than you hope (at least in terms of external validation and rewards). You may feel a horrible pressure to finish it, but you are a free person and can simply choose not to. You can free yourself from this pain without lifting a finger. Go take a walk or bake some cookies instead. If you have th…

Honestly the best thing to do is to decrease the scope of the project, cut lots of feature until you can finish it in a reasonable amount of time.

Re: Finish your projects

#76

Post by Aeolun »

aarondf wrote: post #70
waboremo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened as a result of finishing those projects?

One thing: internal satisfaction. External success, too! The biggest one recently was releasing a course on MySQL at https://planetscale.com/mysql-for-developers . It was painful to push that over the finish line, but giving up on it would have been a huge disservice.

I don’t think it’s really fair to count projects on your day job, unless you have the option of unilaterally cancelling those by yourself?

And even then, you have a lot of extra external motivation (money, peer pressure, boss) to keep pushing when you’d otherwise give up.

Not to say that the satisfaction is any less, but the environment seems different.

Re: Finish your projects

#77

Post by shit_game »

aarondf wrote: post #71
shit_game wrote: post #62

As "inspirational" as this comes across, I can't help but feel a bit cynical in that this is _Github_ publishing this. You know, the company that famously built an AI product using the projects hosted on Github... Personal development and growth and feel-good-iness aside, there is a tremendous conflict of interest present when Github is encouraging its userbase to create working software projects when those software…

GitHub did publish it, but they didn't write it! I (the author) don't work at GitHub, and they don't tell me what to write. The brief they give me is basically "write something a developer would like" and off I go. Not sure if that changes your mind, but at least now you know how it worked behind the scenes!

I'd say it does influence my opinion to be more positive knowing that you're not necessarily in the palm of Githubs hands, though my underlying cynicism still remains - I think part of that is that I've grown significantly more cynical of written pieces over the years having watched online content succumb more and more fervently to the game of monetization and opinion influence.

Additionally, I think this article strikes a bit at my person as I struggle immensely with finishing anything I start, to the point where I've began projects (plural!) meant to act as tooling to create project boilerplates, and I still haven't finished even those. Regardless, I do feel the message shared is a positive one that does come from a place of benevolence.

Tangentially, I'm curious if you could speak to what it's like creating content as a third party author? Are you given prompts regarding the tone or content of your work? Have you ever had work you've produced be rejected by a publisher? I'm not at all familiar with this aspect of online content (despite being stuck to a screen reading it all day), so I'd appreciate some insight on the matter if you're willing and able to share any.

Re: Finish your projects

#79

Post by doctorpangloss »

johnwheeler wrote: post #61
aarondf wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuanced and valuable feedback, that I receive. Thank you! I think your edit was basically going to be my reply, haha. It is hard to address every side of every potential topic in an article. I actually needed help softening the tone to end up with the final version you're reading today. I'm empathetic by nature so it's easy for me to write with empathy, but I'm still prone to generalizing my personal experiences!

IMO, your post is spot on. Grinding out the last 10% of the boring details while fear starts creeping in and new ideas surface to distract you is exactly what I’ve felt. You’ve codified this in a way that I feel like I can begin to manage it better. Really great post. I’ll incorporate this one into my life going forward.

I don’t know.

In video games which I personally know, “make games that are fun to make not to play.”

The polish and marketing of a thing is always done better by bigger budgets which you don’t have. The math the article is missing is that shipping something polished and boring is only possible because you valued your time at zero. So even if you find success, an honest accounting could wind up making your ROI negative.

Indeed I’ve gotten out of so many worse situations by quitting early and getting my life back compared to the colleagues I left behind. It was never worth the chance to ship something that would have never found an audience anyway. This is especially true of people doing startups, they are doing psychological warfare against themselves and shrouding the reality that they have already failed and will have learned little by spending 4 years on something compared to 1.

Re: Finish your projects

#80

Post by anoy8888 »

interroboink wrote: post #11

In general, I like the empathetic tone of the article, and I appreciate that it addresses an emotional facet of software development. But nevertheless it triggers some little part of me w/regard to telling people what they should or should not do, or what they may be proud of. I worry for someone who reads "You also have a duty to your future self to release the project" and "...you tell yourself that you are the kin…

Are young people these days mentally so weak and fragile, and everyone has to be politically correct all the time so that we don’t break their fragile hearts? If you intent to finish and released the product and you fail to do so, is there a need to sugar coat it so that you feel better . You shouldn’t feel better by lying to yourself. This is how you learn and improve as a person . Accept pain .
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