Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lessons from a never-ending personal project

siddhesh.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 80 posts

Re: Lessons from a never-ending personal project

#71

Post by adrium »

musicale wrote: post #66
adrium wrote: post #30

Nice article with interesting thoughts and I appreciate the quotes - but I respectfully disagree that 'finishing a personal project you’re doing just for yourself is impossible' I think it's really important to first reflect on the purpose when doing something: is it to solve a problem, is it to learn something, is it to achieve a target, is it to keep yourself busy to wind down and because you like doing it, or is i…

I feel like I've read too many blogs that were started by an author who wanted to develop writing skills, self-promote, etc. - but didn't seem to have many interesting things to say, and those few things were padded by large quantities of unnecessary text. I greatly prefer the occasional blogger who focuses on quality over quantity.

Glad you mention that, fully agree! One of my primary goals will be quality - I am a perfectionist.

Re: Lessons from a never-ending personal project

#73

Post by weekendvampire »

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…

Well said!

Re: Lessons from a never-ending personal project

#74

Post by weekendvampire »

mikhailfranco wrote: post #62

Highly recommend The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin. He has at least two beautiful chapters on this subject: Completion p191 The Experimenter and the Finisher p205 The last sentence of Completion: We can't wait to finish, because there's another idea calling that lights us up. The endnote for Completion: Is it time for the next project because the clock or the calendar says it's time, or because the work…

Author here. The second quote you mentioned really sums up what I was trying to capture. Thanks for the recommendation!

Re: Lessons from a never-ending personal project

#75

Post by weekendvampire »

ww520 wrote: post #7

Ahhh, this speaks to me. I've been doing my pet project for 6 months now. I have just embarked on another new feature this weekend. The project has been "finished" for a number of times on a number of milestones, but but I just needed to get one more feature in. I'm my best and worst product manager. Best in the case that I can control what go in and what to keep out. Worst in that feature creep is way too easy. Ok.…

Yes, do it!

Re: Lessons from a never-ending personal project

#76

Post by weekendvampire »

hyperthesis wrote: post #17

> This was an extremely dumb use of my time, and it won’t help me in my career or make me money or get me clout. The things you do for themselves are the only things worth doing - because the value of all other things is merely derived.

Very true. (Author here) I think I was just trying to self deprecate to be funny, but deep down I agree with you, even though I have no clue how certain things I spend my time on will ever help me.

Edit: Adding your comment to my favourite quotes list, you put in words something I kinda know but had never seen said articulately before.

Re: Lessons from a never-ending personal project

#77

Post by weekendvampire »

m0llusk wrote: post #9

This is completely alien to me. I've had various personal projects over time. They are always managed in terms of goals and available resources and never deadlines. Deadlines can happen, but in general they are a terrible way to manage nearly any development. Better to consider goals and resources and work from there. My results have been pretty good and often open up new potential direction for continuation projects…

(Author here) Yeah, most of my personal projects don't fall in the never-ending category either, this writeup was more about the ones that do because you get so many ideas as you work on them that you keep working on them.

Re: Lessons from a never-ending personal project

#78

Post by weekendvampire »

adrium wrote: post #30

Nice article with interesting thoughts and I appreciate the quotes - but I respectfully disagree that 'finishing a personal project you’re doing just for yourself is impossible' I think it's really important to first reflect on the purpose when doing something: is it to solve a problem, is it to learn something, is it to achieve a target, is it to keep yourself busy to wind down and because you like doing it, or is i…

Author here - thanks for the kind words. I mostly agree with your comment, the problem is less of not being able to achieve targets and more of the number of targets increasing as you get more and more ideas to add to something. Do start a blog, it's really fun!

Re: Lessons from a never-ending personal project

#80

Post by Log_out_ »

My personal lesson is that stability of frameworks is worth so much more than features, but features are what attracts developers to open source.

So you either have stable but dead, congrats you are the framework developer.

Or you have constantly changing, api breaking rodeos but you might not become a framework developer.

Pick your poison

Post reply on HN