8 ms·

This is a rationalization and you know it. There are tons of other people who also think side project is a way to learn something new, yet they ship. Also the

This is a rationalization and you know it. There are tons of other people who also think side project is a way to learn something new, yet they ship. Also there are tons of startups that started out as side projects. Facebook did. You have no excuse. Stop lying to yourself because it's not doing yourself any good. The only reason you're not releasing your side projects to the world is because you are afraid of criticism.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
vinceguidry 10y ago
Oh believe me, I did try. Moved in with a business cofounder and started working on an idea. We squabbled over a lot of things before I realized that it was a marriage and not a transaction, and what I wanted was more transactional. So I bailed and got a job. I still talk with the guy and fill out estimates for his potential clients whenever he wants. We'll eventually hack out a working professional relationship and start a company together. The fact of the matter is that personal life matters more to me than professional life. I think a lot of people wind up using professional accolades to make up for things they can't get in their personal life. Maybe that's not you, but for me, working on my relationships and my emotional health is 100x more important than a big pile of money and influence ever will. Maybe your answer to this is to "just work harder." To that I just have to say, 'absolutely not'.
- sixstringtheory 10y ago
  It doesn't sound like you were working on a side project there, and even then, you have one bad experience and throw your hands up? You can have a rewarding personal life and still learn while building something on the side, and show it to the world. But, I think you have to be prepared to appreciate the process without expectation of payoff. Just my observation, your comments read like there is a preoccupation with the latter.
  - vinceguidry 10y ago
    There's no point in shipping unless you're gunning for a payoff. Sure, if you want to find meaning in giving total random strangers things that they want you to give them, knock yourself out.
    - deepaksurti 10y ago
      >> There's no point in shipping There is a lot of point in shipping, and as somebody else pointed out that something made in 2 hours can also be shipped. What shipping has taught me is to really really restrict the scope, the un-essentials. That in turn has helped in my day job as well, to negotiate correctly on milestones, feature scope etc helping me in staying sane and productive! >> strangers things that they want you to give them I don't know if you mean OSS users by this but if yes, then where are these users pestering the authors to give them something, they just lap it up if it is useful when the author gives it to them.
    - sixstringtheory 10y ago
      I should be so lucky to have people demanding anything from any of my side projects :D
- cocktailpeanuts 10y ago
  > Maybe your answer to this is to "just work harder." To that I just have to say, 'absolutely not'. I said "ship" it. not work harder. You can even ship something you built in a couple of hours. It IS ok to not ship every single project you work on, but it is not ok to be proud of how you never ship. Personally in terms of "learning" I learned 90% of what I have learned AFTER shipping. You think you are learning but you are only scratching the surface.
  - vinceguidry 10y ago
    It still takes time. Time spent away from your loved ones, away from your friends, away from doing the things you really want to do with your time. It's great that you find meaning in learning from the market. But the only love the market can really give you is colored green.
    - at-fates-hands 10y ago
      As someone who started a side business with the thought of doing both that and my normal 9-5 until my side business took off, everything you've said in all your responses is completely accurate. I found out that after landing six clients and taking on a ton of business, myself and my partner (who was also working a full-time job too) got in and suddenly my personal life vanished. Sure, the money was rolling in, but all of my relationships suffered, I didn't have time to do the things I really wanted to do. Worse yet? I felt like all my clients would want the latest and greatest web technologies and applications to make their businesses run smoother and easier to manage. Nope. They just bickered with me and it was a series of struggles to get anything done. Twelve iterations of design and several "come to Jesus" meetings couldn't stop the non-stop changes for one client. Another client was stuck in a paper and pen world and didn't want to automate or change anything about the one process that hindered their business. Another wanted web design from 1995. It was maddening. After a year, I fired three of my clients, finished two of the sites and cut those clients loose and then kept the only one that was a joy to work with. My life returned to normal, but it made me realize exactly what you said. My LIFE is more important than a pile of money. Maintaining my relationships with my family and friends should be more important.
- the_overseer 10y ago
  A B C - Always Be Closing! In this case, always be shipping. I see a lot of resentment around here against the fact that you developers are always seen as lowly peons by managers. And here we have the perfect example why: this guy doesn't care about shipping, he only care about going into his little world and doing what he wants. This type of mentality leads to what we managers call 'coder mentality'. Programmers that see themselves as programmers instead of problem solvers. You need to get out of your head and realize that coding is just a tool to solve a problem. It's not something that you do just because. It makes no sense. Coding in of itself is useless. Problem solving though, is very useful. Some problems require only coding, some problems require some coding and other things, and other problems require no coding at all in order to be solved. You should always seek to solve problems that you and others have. Don't just go into your world and start coding. That will not make you a better programmer. We managers hate the 'coder' because he just wants to code and not solve business problems. That is why you are treated the way you are treated and will always command less respect than others. By the way, when things are down and we have to let people go, who do you think we let go first: the guy who shows interest in the business and how to make work better and cut costs, or the guy who just puts headphones on and starts coding surrounded by red bulls? I'll leave you with the now famouse Glengarry Glen Ross Scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9XW6P0tiVc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9XW6P0tiVc Always be shipping! You don't ship, you don't exist. When I hire I always ask about shipped products specifically. The things that didn't ship don't exist. I consider that wasted time. One shipped product means more than 1000 personal projects that didn't ship, no matter how much you think you learnt.
exDM69 10y ago
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, but they don't really gather any attention or contributions from others. Sometimes I share some snippets in relevant discussions and receive positive feedback but I have no idea what it would take to actually gain any traction. So I've basically given up on the idea of "finishing" or "shipping" or whatever. I have 3 hours of free time on Saturdays and I get to choose how to use it. I can either do fun stuff (coding, art, etc) or desperately try to "ship" and gain traction but that just isn't fun. That said, if anyone is interested in open source space simulation (my current "main" side project, 5+ years in), get in touch on HN. There's no way I'll ever ship it alone, but it's nearly impossible to get anyone else to help me with it because I don't have anything cool and shiny to show.
- cocktailpeanuts 10y ago
  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, but I also know that getting the word out vs not doing it makes a huge difference. 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.
  - exDM69 10y ago
    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.
draw_down 10y ago
Yikes.
JackFr 10y ago
There's shipping and there's shipping. I've got a side project with minus $30/month in revenue, with no plans to do much better. I have 3-5 users who complain when the site goes down and give me feedback on new features. The motivation for the project is twofold. The simple joy of creating something -- no different than hanging a child's drawing on the fridge, and to keep my skills current and to play with technology I might otherwise not be using at work. That being said -- I agree with you -- without shipping a working product, you've got nothing.
SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
I dont want everything I do criticized. I dont want every small doodad I make to have to worry about licenses and IP. I dont want to have people yelling at me for not supporting a weekend project. As a specific example, I wrote a personal set of Minecraft tools. I read a lot of file format information off the wiki to get compatibility with their map (and other) files. Did I accidentally use protected IP because the wiki wasnt clean information? Maybe. Did I stray in to copyright violation by using their names for blocks, rather than renaming the numeric codes? Possibly. Then there's the fact version 1 was a hacked together spaghetti ball with magic values all over the place I wrote in an evening. Would I have benefited from having that feedback told to me? Not at all -- that was actually solid engineering to get 'er done as a prototype. A week later version 2 was out, but it was a complete rewrite that didn't have any compatibility. Maybe feedback would've been helpful here, but even I thought there were still some obvious flaws because I was trying a new style of programming in Python, and it hadn't gelled yet. Version 3 was a week or two after that, with another breaking rewrite. This time it used a model of automata from a completely different source, changing the storage format, adding a scripting interface, etc. with only a thin definition file for and import/export layer to Minecraft. And that's where it sits on a drive, 90% finished automata development tools with MC compatibility because I learned what I wanted to from the project and moved on to other things. (I say 90% finished because while it works fine, there are features I thought of but didn't add.) I don't want to keep working on it, I don't want to share the implementation of the automata engine because it's slightly buggy, and I don't want to support the project if others choose to use it. (And they very well might -- MC development tools suck.) What would've been gained, at any point, in "shipping" it (beyond using it myself to make a few maps, which I did)?
alkonaut 10y ago
> Stop lying to yourself because it's not doing yourself any good. The only reason you're not releasing your side projects to the world is because you are afraid of criticism. I often set the bar so high there is no chance I could ever finish. The only projects that are attractive and shiny enough are those that are too big to finish. E.g. I could choose between writing, completing and shipping a small indie game. Or I could write an OS from scratch, or the next Unreal Engine because I think it looks shiny. Obviously I have no chance in hell of compleing a AAA game engine. Or an OS that does any more than say "Hello world" on boot. But I can pretend to be writing a AAA game engine - and I can keep pretending for many nights, until I have 1% of a game engine. At that point, there is probably something shinier that gets my attention. So releasing it to the world: Obviously: I could put my 1% of a game engine on github for everyone to see, and that would be "releasing it to the world". But most likely no one would see it! I have hundreds of projects sitting around in various stages of completeness. Perhaps 2 or 3 were ever in some kind of usable state - and what they do have in common is that it was horrible to "finish" them in terms of making a proper repo, readmes, deployments, setups etc... The reason finishing stuff and shipping them is so boring is because even a trivially small project that people actually want to use will have a ton of work required that aren't coding. I have no interest deploying a web app, no interest in drawing (or searching for) graphics for the little indie game etc. I'd rather make a new placeholder game than finishing the first one! I just want to code. I don't mind showing my code. I just normally don't want make a finished product of it. I get enough of that at work. Edit: noticed someone said pretty much exactly this already and you responded. Oh well.
- RealityVoid 10y ago
  I find your OS example a little bit misplaced considering a quite complex OS can be completed by one person (obviously more complete than "hello world") but regardless of that, the commercial value of a new OS is quite low but the usefullness of learned (I'd say) is quite high.
  - throwaway5356 10y ago
    Hell, even Terry A. David completed TempleOS, and he's mentally ill. So yeah you sure could complete and release shit, you just don't want to for some reason or other.
twothamendment 10y ago
"The only reason you're not releasing your side projects to the world is because you are afraid of criticism." No, I have side projects to learn and play. Lots of things I try end up in production code at work because I learned how to do it. Of the projects that are in pretty good shape I don't want to ship it because then I'm committed to supporting it. Shipping turns a side project into a job and unless I have a killer app that will make me some serious money - I have a job and I don't need another.
mtdewcmu 10y ago
Side projects die because your initial enthusiasm wears off and you start to realize that you are midway through a project that you initiated for your own self amusement and it's no longer making you happy. Don't beat yourself up about walking away. It doesn't mean that you are a quitter and you'll never accomplish anything. It means that you need to find something more important to do. Important tasks are self-justifying; you don't have to talk yourself into working on them. When you find yourself on something important, your motivation will come. You will see it all the way through. In the case of Facebook, I think it must have felt important, because it saw instant success around campus. Once you see that something is generating success, even on a relatively small scale, that starts to validate its importance and you can rationally consider increasing your commitment.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

vinceguidry 10y ago

Oh believe me, I did try. Moved in with a business cofounder and started working on an idea. We squabbled over a lot of things before I realized that it was a marriage and not a transaction, and what I wanted was more transactional. So I bailed and got a job. I still talk with the guy and fill out estimates for his potential clients whenever he wants. We'll eventually hack out a working professional relationship and start a company together. The fact of the matter is that personal life matters more to me than professional life. I think a lot of people wind up using professional accolades to make up for things they can't get in their personal life. Maybe that's not you, but for me, working on my relationships and my emotional health is 100x more important than a big pile of money and influence ever will. Maybe your answer to this is to "just work harder." To that I just have to say, 'absolutely not'.

sixstringtheory 10y ago
It doesn't sound like you were working on a side project there, and even then, you have one bad experience and throw your hands up? You can have a rewarding personal life and still learn while building something on the side, and show it to the world. But, I think you have to be prepared to appreciate the process without expectation of payoff. Just my observation, your comments read like there is a preoccupation with the latter.
- vinceguidry 10y ago
  There's no point in shipping unless you're gunning for a payoff. Sure, if you want to find meaning in giving total random strangers things that they want you to give them, knock yourself out.
  - deepaksurti 10y ago
    >> There's no point in shipping There is a lot of point in shipping, and as somebody else pointed out that something made in 2 hours can also be shipped. What shipping has taught me is to really really restrict the scope, the un-essentials. That in turn has helped in my day job as well, to negotiate correctly on milestones, feature scope etc helping me in staying sane and productive! >> strangers things that they want you to give them I don't know if you mean OSS users by this but if yes, then where are these users pestering the authors to give them something, they just lap it up if it is useful when the author gives it to them.
  - sixstringtheory 10y ago
    I should be so lucky to have people demanding anything from any of my side projects :D
cocktailpeanuts 10y ago
> Maybe your answer to this is to "just work harder." To that I just have to say, 'absolutely not'. I said "ship" it. not work harder. You can even ship something you built in a couple of hours. It IS ok to not ship every single project you work on, but it is not ok to be proud of how you never ship. Personally in terms of "learning" I learned 90% of what I have learned AFTER shipping. You think you are learning but you are only scratching the surface.
- vinceguidry 10y ago
  It still takes time. Time spent away from your loved ones, away from your friends, away from doing the things you really want to do with your time. It's great that you find meaning in learning from the market. But the only love the market can really give you is colored green.
  - at-fates-hands 10y ago
    As someone who started a side business with the thought of doing both that and my normal 9-5 until my side business took off, everything you've said in all your responses is completely accurate. I found out that after landing six clients and taking on a ton of business, myself and my partner (who was also working a full-time job too) got in and suddenly my personal life vanished. Sure, the money was rolling in, but all of my relationships suffered, I didn't have time to do the things I really wanted to do. Worse yet? I felt like all my clients would want the latest and greatest web technologies and applications to make their businesses run smoother and easier to manage. Nope. They just bickered with me and it was a series of struggles to get anything done. Twelve iterations of design and several "come to Jesus" meetings couldn't stop the non-stop changes for one client. Another client was stuck in a paper and pen world and didn't want to automate or change anything about the one process that hindered their business. Another wanted web design from 1995. It was maddening. After a year, I fired three of my clients, finished two of the sites and cut those clients loose and then kept the only one that was a joy to work with. My life returned to normal, but it made me realize exactly what you said. My LIFE is more important than a pile of money. Maintaining my relationships with my family and friends should be more important.
the_overseer 10y ago
A B C - Always Be Closing! In this case, always be shipping. I see a lot of resentment around here against the fact that you developers are always seen as lowly peons by managers. And here we have the perfect example why: this guy doesn't care about shipping, he only care about going into his little world and doing what he wants. This type of mentality leads to what we managers call 'coder mentality'. Programmers that see themselves as programmers instead of problem solvers. You need to get out of your head and realize that coding is just a tool to solve a problem. It's not something that you do just because. It makes no sense. Coding in of itself is useless. Problem solving though, is very useful. Some problems require only coding, some problems require some coding and other things, and other problems require no coding at all in order to be solved. You should always seek to solve problems that you and others have. Don't just go into your world and start coding. That will not make you a better programmer. We managers hate the 'coder' because he just wants to code and not solve business problems. That is why you are treated the way you are treated and will always command less respect than others. By the way, when things are down and we have to let people go, who do you think we let go first: the guy who shows interest in the business and how to make work better and cut costs, or the guy who just puts headphones on and starts coding surrounded by red bulls? I'll leave you with the now famouse Glengarry Glen Ross Scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9XW6P0tiVc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9XW6P0tiVc Always be shipping! You don't ship, you don't exist. When I hire I always ask about shipped products specifically. The things that didn't ship don't exist. I consider that wasted time. One shipped product means more than 1000 personal projects that didn't ship, no matter how much you think you learnt.

exDM69 10y ago

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, but they don't really gather any attention or contributions from others. Sometimes I share some snippets in relevant discussions and receive positive feedback but I have no idea what it would take to actually gain any traction. So I've basically given up on the idea of "finishing" or "shipping" or whatever. I have 3 hours of free time on Saturdays and I get to choose how to use it. I can either do fun stuff (coding, art, etc) or desperately try to "ship" and gain traction but that just isn't fun. That said, if anyone is interested in open source space simulation (my current "main" side project, 5+ years in), get in touch on HN. There's no way I'll ever ship it alone, but it's nearly impossible to get anyone else to help me with it because I don't have anything cool and shiny to show.

cocktailpeanuts 10y ago
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, but I also know that getting the word out vs not doing it makes a huge difference. 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.
- exDM69 10y ago
  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.

draw_down 10y ago

Yikes.

JackFr 10y ago

There's shipping and there's shipping. I've got a side project with minus $30/month in revenue, with no plans to do much better. I have 3-5 users who complain when the site goes down and give me feedback on new features. The motivation for the project is twofold. The simple joy of creating something -- no different than hanging a child's drawing on the fridge, and to keep my skills current and to play with technology I might otherwise not be using at work. That being said -- I agree with you -- without shipping a working product, you've got nothing.

SomeStupidPoint 10y ago

I dont want everything I do criticized. I dont want every small doodad I make to have to worry about licenses and IP. I dont want to have people yelling at me for not supporting a weekend project. As a specific example, I wrote a personal set of Minecraft tools. I read a lot of file format information off the wiki to get compatibility with their map (and other) files. Did I accidentally use protected IP because the wiki wasnt clean information? Maybe. Did I stray in to copyright violation by using their names for blocks, rather than renaming the numeric codes? Possibly. Then there's the fact version 1 was a hacked together spaghetti ball with magic values all over the place I wrote in an evening. Would I have benefited from having that feedback told to me? Not at all -- that was actually solid engineering to get 'er done as a prototype. A week later version 2 was out, but it was a complete rewrite that didn't have any compatibility. Maybe feedback would've been helpful here, but even I thought there were still some obvious flaws because I was trying a new style of programming in Python, and it hadn't gelled yet. Version 3 was a week or two after that, with another breaking rewrite. This time it used a model of automata from a completely different source, changing the storage format, adding a scripting interface, etc. with only a thin definition file for and import/export layer to Minecraft. And that's where it sits on a drive, 90% finished automata development tools with MC compatibility because I learned what I wanted to from the project and moved on to other things. (I say 90% finished because while it works fine, there are features I thought of but didn't add.) I don't want to keep working on it, I don't want to share the implementation of the automata engine because it's slightly buggy, and I don't want to support the project if others choose to use it. (And they very well might -- MC development tools suck.) What would've been gained, at any point, in "shipping" it (beyond using it myself to make a few maps, which I did)?

alkonaut 10y ago

> Stop lying to yourself because it's not doing yourself any good. The only reason you're not releasing your side projects to the world is because you are afraid of criticism. I often set the bar so high there is no chance I could ever finish. The only projects that are attractive and shiny enough are those that are too big to finish. E.g. I could choose between writing, completing and shipping a small indie game. Or I could write an OS from scratch, or the next Unreal Engine because I think it looks shiny. Obviously I have no chance in hell of compleing a AAA game engine. Or an OS that does any more than say "Hello world" on boot. But I can pretend to be writing a AAA game engine - and I can keep pretending for many nights, until I have 1% of a game engine. At that point, there is probably something shinier that gets my attention. So releasing it to the world: Obviously: I could put my 1% of a game engine on github for everyone to see, and that would be "releasing it to the world". But most likely no one would see it! I have hundreds of projects sitting around in various stages of completeness. Perhaps 2 or 3 were ever in some kind of usable state - and what they do have in common is that it was horrible to "finish" them in terms of making a proper repo, readmes, deployments, setups etc... The reason finishing stuff and shipping them is so boring is because even a trivially small project that people actually want to use will have a ton of work required that aren't coding. I have no interest deploying a web app, no interest in drawing (or searching for) graphics for the little indie game etc. I'd rather make a new placeholder game than finishing the first one! I just want to code. I don't mind showing my code. I just normally don't want make a finished product of it. I get enough of that at work. Edit: noticed someone said pretty much exactly this already and you responded. Oh well.

RealityVoid 10y ago
I find your OS example a little bit misplaced considering a quite complex OS can be completed by one person (obviously more complete than "hello world") but regardless of that, the commercial value of a new OS is quite low but the usefullness of learned (I'd say) is quite high.
- throwaway5356 10y ago
  Hell, even Terry A. David completed TempleOS, and he's mentally ill. So yeah you sure could complete and release shit, you just don't want to for some reason or other.

twothamendment 10y ago

"The only reason you're not releasing your side projects to the world is because you are afraid of criticism." No, I have side projects to learn and play. Lots of things I try end up in production code at work because I learned how to do it. Of the projects that are in pretty good shape I don't want to ship it because then I'm committed to supporting it. Shipping turns a side project into a job and unless I have a killer app that will make me some serious money - I have a job and I don't need another.

mtdewcmu 10y ago

Side projects die because your initial enthusiasm wears off and you start to realize that you are midway through a project that you initiated for your own self amusement and it's no longer making you happy. Don't beat yourself up about walking away. It doesn't mean that you are a quitter and you'll never accomplish anything. It means that you need to find something more important to do. Important tasks are self-justifying; you don't have to talk yourself into working on them. When you find yourself on something important, your motivation will come. You will see it all the way through. In the case of Facebook, I think it must have felt important, because it saw instant success around campus. Once you see that something is generating success, even on a relatively small scale, that starts to validate its importance and you can rationally consider increasing your commitment.