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This probably is the most common problem for everyone here in HN. I have yet to solve my problem so take my advice with a grain of salt. I have 3 side projects
by anyfactor 5y ago
This probably is the most common problem for everyone here in HN. I have yet to solve my problem so take my advice with a grain of salt.
I have 3 side projects that are on limbo. One of them is stuck because I am feeling technically challenged. Another one depends on the completion of the third project. Third project is stuck because I think I should finish the first project entirely then move to this project.
But here is what I am doing and get this, I built another project over couple of weekends that is 99% finish. Why did I do that? Simple answer is that I wanted to get my sideproject-building-juices flowing. I wanted to see if I had the ability to build something from scratch and ship it out FULLY FINISHED.
The scope was brutally limited and that meant that I couldn't simply add features to it. I intentionally choose solutions that I knew can never be scalable and extensible. And I also promised myself I won't spend a dime on it and I won't expect anything beyond upvotes in a Show HN post.
So what I built? A opinionated news link aggregator. There is no way it could scalable, marketable or profitable. The goal is getting a bookmark and 3+ upvotes. Period. I am more proud of the development story of the story rather than the project itself. (I am unironically using Google Sheets for my backend).
TLDR: Build a something that can be shipped in under 3 days.
- woutr_be 5y agoHow's that link aggregator looking? Have you reached your goals?
- anyfactor 5y agoAs far goals there isn't any goals really. I empathize well with people, I read article from reddit, I save the links on reddit. And they get transferred to a google sheets, which I can edit. And 2 python programs does the rest automatically. And viola you have a personalized news link aggregator. - CSS: Using classless minimalist framework>> Tuft.css - DB/CMS: Google Sheets. I unironically use Google Sheets as CMS. Tons of reasons. Deserves it's own standalone comment. - Helper APIs: Reddit, Google Spreadsheet. Super easy to understand. - Two python programs to generate JSON files. JSON > Static HTML Files created with a Template Engine, Jinja 2 (Not frameworks). Static files are uploaded to github > hosted on netlify. - Goatcounter, a minimalist web analytics platform. - Todo: Python scripts will be transferred to RPI on a cronjob, Goatcounter click events need to be added, need to work on the about me section, remove unused CSS. ----- Now, the site doesn't look that good. 95% of the job was done using Python which I just enjoy writing. The project balances barebones of web development vs writability of code. Using a template engine as supposed to a framework, this approach should be more popular. Google Sheets is extremely dynamic solution as a CMS, nobody can mess it up. The tools I have chose virtually limits my scope. I can't help but being preachy about this, I enjoyed my time doing this so much.