its not ok. i do my project (and i dont want to share it here either) by myself for 20 years and i earned not enough to support myself but i still soldier on. keep going if what u are making is cool (at least to u).
It's OK to abandon your side-project (2024)
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Re: It's OK to abandon your side-project (2024)
#72Related, for some 2026-thinking:
Using coding assistance tools to revive projects you never were going to finish
Re: It's OK to abandon your side-project (2024)
#73Shipping is overrated as a success metric in some cases. Some projects teach you everything they're going to teach you long before they're releasable. That's still a win i'd say :)
Re: It's OK to abandon your side-project (2024)
#74[dead]
Re: It's OK to abandon your side-project (2024)
#75On your side-project it's also ok to ignore best engineering practice, reinvent the wheel because you feel like it or make decisions based on what seems most interesting even if it's not a 'good' decision. The critical thing is what the author says: > always make sure that you're doing them for yourself, and for the right reasons For me my side projects are generally something to have fun with and something to learn…
> On your side-project it's also ok to ignore best engineering practice, reinvent the wheel because you feel like it or make decisions based on what seems most interesting even if it's not a 'good' decision. Pro tip for enjoying your life at work: this also applies to you work projects. Once you realize this, you can have a lot more fun at work and even coerce work projects to be more like your for-fun/side projects.…
> your company almost definitely does not care about you and you might as well extract as much enjoyment as possible
This is a very post-millenial attitude that explains in a nutshell a lot of the problems we have in society today.
Re: It's OK to abandon your side-project (2024)
#76> "not always sunshine and Lambos"
This bit killed me. :-D
Re: It's OK to abandon your side-project (2024)
#77I like the idea of having an “end of life wrap-up" for half-finished side projects. Rather than just stopping and leaving them abandoned, you make something like a report on what you learned, what you built, and why you're stopping. Then it feels less like you've abandoned something outright.
that is a great idea. Unfortunately, I have never done that so far. But I do agree that it would certainly help your understanding and deepen your knowledge a bit when you do so for each project and write the core lessons and achievements down for each. One thing I am struggling in particular is to NOT start new (side)projects. Now that AI greatly facilitates coming up with new ideas and also CODING new software, it is just so enticing to start a new project every other day. In many cases, sticking with a few select projects might actually be the better choice. But it's really hard, isn't it.
Re: It's OK to abandon your side-project (2024)
#78I had a side project going off and on for YEARS. I thought it was a great business idea with some interesting technical challenges.
I asked Claude and ChatGPT about it, and they both shot the idea down as a viable startup. It was a liberating feeling honestly! I have since focused my efforts on other projects and have been more successful with those.
Re: It's OK to abandon your side-project (2024)
#79I had a side project going off and on for YEARS. I thought it was a great business idea with some interesting technical challenges. I asked Claude and ChatGPT about it, and they both shot the idea down as a viable startup. It was a liberating feeling honestly! I have since focused my efforts on other projects and have been more successful with those.
On the one hand this makes a lot of sense.
On the other hand I get oogy about humans deferring their passionate feelings in favor of cold machine logic.
Re: It's OK to abandon your side-project (2024)
#80Whenever I start a side-project now, I think through my expectations and set a timeframe to abandon it depending on how those expectations work out.