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

Side projects

antirez.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 243 posts

Re: Side projects

#81

Post by vonmoltke »

derekp7 wrote: post #49
bglazer wrote: post #42

I'm working on a side project now that will eventually be an open source project. I think it could benefit a lot of people. My problem is that I have a full time job. When I come home at night I want to cook dinner, run, socialize, drink a beer with a friend, or work on an art project. I don't particularly want to configure Ansible or read the OpenVPN docs. At most I can get 3-5 hours of productive work per week on t…

I'm in a very similar situation -- got a pretty decent open source project out (a mad 2-week programming project over a Christmas holiday vacation). But I'll be darned if I can find time to work on it now (how does the average person find 5 hours a day to watch tv?) But here's what I'm starting to do now -- I set an alarm to make sure I remember to leave the office at 4:30 pm, instead of squeezing in that extra bit o…

> how does the average person find 5 hours a day to watch tv?

Watching TV is passive, which means you can do it while doing other things. I watch it while cooking, cleaning the house, doing the dishes, and other similar manual and low-cognition activities. In fact, I can't just sit and watch TV for very long.

Re: Side projects

#82

Post by smurfpandey »

bglazer wrote: post #42

I'm working on a side project now that will eventually be an open source project. I think it could benefit a lot of people. My problem is that I have a full time job. When I come home at night I want to cook dinner, run, socialize, drink a beer with a friend, or work on an art project. I don't particularly want to configure Ansible or read the OpenVPN docs. At most I can get 3-5 hours of productive work per week on t…

I have started many side-projects but left them half way, because i got bored or something else caught my eye. But with my latest project[0] I am following a simple philosophy by John Resig, "Write code every day"[1]. Even if i write code for 30 mins, it's okay. By following this i am always in touch with the project. It has helped me a lot in being disciplined.

[0]: https://github.com/smurfpandey/mysqlweb

[1]: http://ejohn.org/blog/write-code-every-day/

Re: Side projects

#85

Post by darkFunction »

humbertomn wrote: post #17

I'm another believer that focussing in 1 thing is overestimated. "There’s a myth when it comes to what we’ve been taught about focus. Doing only 1 thing isn’t focusing. It’s essentially just doing 1 thing. Following a course of action until completion is FOCUS" - Hodan Ibrahim Interesting related read: http://www.psychotactics.com/blog/psychological-marketing-my...

I struggle to focus on more than one thing, in programming and in life, one thing is intensely the single focus of all my passion and energy until one day it is not.

Re: Side projects

#86

Post by jorendorffmoz »

seiji wrote: post #68
jorendorffmoz wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do want to argue the point. :) The strange miracle of open source software is that when companies use something like Redis to make a lot of money, they end up investing in it, they contribute work to the project, and the community does gain from their contributions. In other words, the whole point of OSS is that exactly the thing you say never happens, happens all the time . Most open source development is commerci…

In other words, the whole point of OSS is that exactly the thing you say never happens, happens all the time. It's a matter of project scale too. Nobody cares about exploiting Hadoop because it's millions of lines of low quality code written by thousands of day-job developers. But, if a project is clearly the work of, say, 2-5 individual developers, it's easier to see how those individuals are creating much more valu…

But, if a project is clearly the work of, say, 2-5 individual developers, it's easier to see how those individuals are creating much more value than anybody is possibly compensating them for.

I think this is true of anything worth doing.

I like your characterization of the mongodb model and the RedHat model. (I don't see anything wrong with RedHat's model, by the way. More power to them.)

But your complaint would have made a lot more sense fifteen years ago. Now there are a lot of other models. There are even other models that work really nicely!

There are consultancies, like Igalia. Some companies hire open source developers because they use the project and want to make sure active development continues (antirez's day job might be an example of this; at a guess that's why Google once hired GvR, the creator of Python). Some use OSS projects as a recruiting tool; smart ones use it as a signal of quality in hiring. If you selectively hire engineers with OSS on their resumes, you are unwittingly paying returns to OSS development.

Companies can also use OSS to reduce the cost of external efforts that are strategically important to them, and they can win a developer mindshare benefit from doing so. This is why Microsoft open-sourced the .NET platform (under a good license!).

I'm no VC but the bazaar seems healthier financially than it's ever been.

Re: Side projects

#87

Post by joshdotsmith »

rday wrote: post #47
bglazer wrote: post #42

I'm working on a side project now that will eventually be an open source project. I think it could benefit a lot of people. My problem is that I have a full time job. When I come home at night I want to cook dinner, run, socialize, drink a beer with a friend, or work on an art project. I don't particularly want to configure Ansible or read the OpenVPN docs. At most I can get 3-5 hours of productive work per week on t…

2 kids, 3 freelance gigs (full time at this), a couple startups behind me (1 pivoted away, 1 still running). I would love to get 5 hours for an OSX app I really want to build. You really do have to shut out the rest of your life if you want to make a serious run at a project. When you are cramming a side project into you life, you really can "work" 80 hour weeks. The irritability you're experiencing will probably jus…

Speaking of side projects and learning to cook, I'm working on a side project that helps people learn to cook. Happy to share if interested.

Re: Side projects

#88

Post by rckrd »

derekp7 wrote: post #52

Does anyone have any suggestions for promoting an open source project? I hate mentioning my side project on various forums, even if it is topical -- it makes me feel spammy. I thought about taking out some ads once I add in a few more "enterprise" type features, and was hoping that some open-source focused sites would have a discount on advertising open source projects using unsold ad inventory. I'd also like to find…

-Tutorials & Examples -Extensive documentation

Sure, these are boring things to work on, but in my experience these are what have let separate a mature project that I can see works from a less mature project that may introduce even more bugs and maintenance.

Re: Side projects

#89

Post by Spearchucker »

I have a full time job, and a 3y/o kid. Get up at 7am and take him to school at 8:30am. Get to work at 9:30am or so. Get home around 6pm. Give my son a bath, we all have dinner and my son is in bed somewhere between 8 and 9pm. I then spend ~2 hours on my side project, in bed somewhere between 11pm and 12am. I train twice a week so this pattern happens three days out of 5.

On weekends I can often negotiate up to 4 hours to myself. Progress isn't too slow, and I keep my sanity.

Re: Side projects

#90

Post by conner_bw »

seiji wrote: post #37
famousactress wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been broadly thinking about ways to take a bite out of this challenge. I've visited a couple of 1% for the planet[1] companies and been really inspired by what I've seen. In short, these companies pledge 1% of revenue to environmental causes. As the company scales it has a massive effect on their culture. I visited New Belgium Brewing (makers of Fat Tire) for instance, and a huge number of their employees are so…

I've visited a couple of 1% for the planet[1] companies and been really inspired by what I've seen. In short, these companies pledge 1% of revenue to environmental causes. Interesting approach, but I bet those companies also aren't high growth tech startups/companies. The only goal at a growing tech company is reduce costs, increase revenue. They aren't looking for new ways to pay for things they legally get for free…

History repeats itself, this book needs to come back in style...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ragged-Trousered_Philanthro...

Post reply on HN