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Writing small, unfinished projects is great ! At least I think so. It's what keeps me passionate. It's a way to learn new things (language, framework, etc...).

by abricq 3y ago

Writing small, unfinished projects is great ! At least I think so. It's what keeps me passionate. It's a way to learn new things (language, framework, etc...). I don't like much the phrasing "I give up". How about "I had fun, learned while enjoying it, and now move on to my next unfinished project". Great article though !

loceng 3y ago
I've always wondered about this mindset. For me, due to life circumstances of severe chronic pain, until relatively recently my life and projects were mostly on hold. To cope with my projects "dying" 10+ years ago from no longer being able to work on them, aside from the grief of going through my entrepreneurial baby "dying" - the main project I was working on and putting all of my effort on, and was going well - I began to tell myself that things were simply on hold, on the backburner, and I will revisit them again in the future. My ideas and understanding and strategy since evolved, and so even though I wasn't actively working on projects - they and myself were still evolving.
orangevelcro 3y ago
Totally agree! I have so many unfinished projects, but I also find that I end up using bits and pieces from those unfinished projects in new stuff. I always learn something from them.
xmprt 3y ago
Thanks for reading! I came to the same conclusion. I don't see people post about their "failures" enough (although true failures are rare because you can always learn something from them) so I figured this would be a good thing to share.
- abricq 3y ago
  That's true, I guess we see a lot of "success project" and feel ashamed to share our projects with half-started README. But what a great coffee-with-colleague-topic it makes !
codegeek 3y ago
I love to do small projects even if they technically don't finish. Sometimes those are useful later down the road when I am working on a bigger project and that little project comes in handy. For example, I just created my own poor man's CMS in Go that processes Markdown to HTML. A while ago, I had played around basic Go library that does that so I just used it easily in my project without needing to spend too much time figuring out that library.
- diggan 3y ago
  Sounds like the general definition of "finish" doesn't match with your own. One could "complete" or "finish" a project if the goal was to learn something specific (or general), although others wouldn't considered it finished unless it was deployed and others use it. I think lots of us would be better off if we redefined "finish" to basically mean "done", which you can define however you want :)
RajT88 3y ago
This! I have many unfinished projects. The goal was not to build a thing - it usually was more an excuse to learn. Although sometimes it was to build a thing. I once wrote a podcast downloader in powershell because all the ones out there sucked.
junon 3y ago
Totally this. This approach is why I'm where I'm at in life, I think.
tagami 3y ago
yes, like sketches in art.
rpastuszak 3y ago
+100000 Worst case you’ve learned something new or had fun. I am yet to regret a single instance when I regretted sharing unfinished, scrappy work: https://untested.sonnet.io/Share+your+unfinished%2C+scrappy+work https://untested.sonnet.io/Share+your+unfinished%2C+scrappy+... One approach I really liked was the 2/2/2 rule: 2 hours for a poc → does this even make sense? 2 days for a prototype to share with friends 2 weeks to build something useful (paid if your goal is to charge for it) You can leave the process at any stage. Each stage teaches you something new.
- l33t7332273 3y ago
  2 hours seems short for a poc, in my experience. What general criteria do you have for such a barebones poc?
- abricq 3y ago
  Bless your mess !
  - rpastuszak 3y ago
    Haha thanks for reading!
- el_benhameen 3y ago
  Wow, I really like that rule. I’ll often discourage myself from playing with a POC because of how nebulous the timeline can feel. I’m going to this that next time.
  - baq 3y ago
    With LLMs nowadays getting a PoC banged out in a couple hours is easier than ever. The things make boilerplate and you can focus on the value.
    - xmprt 3y ago
      Author here and I 100% agree. The reason I was able to get a lot of the prototyping done within the first few days is by using ChatGPT. On the flipside I think the code that it wrote was not very maintainable so I should have started from scratch after validating my PoC.
alkonaut 3y ago
This. I have done this for 30 years and never, ever thought about a side project “this could be a commercial success”. What’s described here is a lot further along than I normally take a project. There is always a more interesting project to make that has no potential of being “successful” than the most interesting idea among potentially successful projects. I think for some people the entrepreneurial angle itself is enough to make a project attractive. But I never quite understood it.
- JJMcJ 3y ago
  > “this could be a commercial success" Someday maybe, but if not, that's fine anyway because I learned something and had some fun.
- gertlex 3y ago
  I also never ponder personal projects from a commercial standpoint. But I sure see that narrative here on HN frequently. I have to conclude that most people on HN talking about commercializing are doing purely software projects. My projects very often include hardware. Commercializing hardware+software projects is hard... orders of magnitude harder than just software. That's probably a factor in why the idea of making money from wiring/soldering/dremeling/hacking things is so far from the forefront of my mind. As for what's attractive... novelty and usability/street cred do seem to be my subconcious goals. "Street cred" or even just aspiring to have people use a software tool is certainly a form of non-profitable entrepreneurship.
  - hyperthesis 3y ago
    HN began as startup news, and remains part of YC (news.ycombinator.com): commercialization bias.
    - jfil 3y ago
      That's right - remember that the prevailing opinion here is just "one way to be". You are allowed to do things just for fun.
  - 3y ago
TheCaptain4815 3y ago
Same here for physical "ideas"/ecommerce stuff. By constantly "failing", I've gotten very efficient at knowing whether an idea or product is worth attempting. I will say there is a certain charm to being ignorant that I've seen bring people success (including myself). I've attempted ambitious SEO projects when I was less experienced and succeeded, and looking back in hindsight they were pretty crazy given the success odds.
- hyperthesis 3y ago
  I can see becoming more efficient at feeling confident in your opinion, but how can you know you were right - particularly the ones you dismissed? (Though I don't know what else one could do). Never tell me the odds.
forgotmypw17 3y ago
I liked how Sid Meier put it in an interview: > Our philosophy is to find the fun first and do a lot of prototyping and a lot of iterating very early on. There are probably more projects that I've worked on that haven't turned into final games than have. > We have ideas. We have prototypes. We spend a lot of time trying out ideas. Probably two-thirds of them don’t end up going anywhere, but experimenting with those kinds of things is fun. To answer the OP question, I can't find the interview I was looking for now, but I remember that he said that he stops working on a prototype when he realizes that he's learned enough from it.
Verdex 3y ago
I think unfinished projects are important. On a personal level, I've had many unfinished projects that felt (at the time) like failures. At one point in time, I had two different ideas for parse libraries that I had to give up on because I couldn't figure out how to make them work in a way that was remotely useful. However, a few years later, I was able to create a third, otherwise unrelated, project that I realized I could use to unify the previous two. If you're not running into situations where you have to put away a project as unfinished then it might mean that you're not pushing yourself to and beyond your capabilities (which, depending on your goals, can be totally fine). And just because something ends up unfinished, doesn't mean that it might not be able to come back later in a different form.
- hyperthesis 3y ago
  Reminds me of Feynman saying that when he learnt a new mathematical technique, he'd try it to see if it helped on his unsolved problems.
Madmallard 3y ago
I think these are necessary pre-requisites to larger projects that you may try to bring to market. If it's too daunting and you can't ever finish then the reality is you're probably not yet competent enough. Hayao Miyazaki went through thousands of unfinished short stories and Manga before working at Toei and other studios then he finally developed enough confidence and competence and started hitting homeruns later. It wouldn't have happened without that prior buildup over decades.
szundi 3y ago
I have spent my middle and high-school years writing about 1000 games. Literally. Most of them I just stopped when the interesting part was done. I have kind of finished like 5-6 at all. Best time of my life. Also sometimes wrote (finished) software for companies as a freelancer. Then I finished high-school and started uni where my startup was founded with a friend. I had a successful exit lately.
hyperthesis 3y ago
winners never quit and quitters never win but those who never win and never quit are idiots https://despair.com/products/stupidity https://despair.com/products/stupidity
- ihaveajob 3y ago
  The corollary is that everyone is an idiot until they win, or quit. Then they're either winners or quitters.
- codazoda 3y ago
  I might be that idiot. But, whatever. I enjoy my failure enough to try again. https://joeldare.com/how-to-lose-money-with-25-years-of-failed-businesses https://joeldare.com/how-to-lose-money-with-25-years-of-fail...
hyperthesis 3y ago
Learning out of interest is surely the most effective way to learn, by far.

by abricq 3y ago

loceng 3y ago

I've always wondered about this mindset. For me, due to life circumstances of severe chronic pain, until relatively recently my life and projects were mostly on hold. To cope with my projects "dying" 10+ years ago from no longer being able to work on them, aside from the grief of going through my entrepreneurial baby "dying" - the main project I was working on and putting all of my effort on, and was going well - I began to tell myself that things were simply on hold, on the backburner, and I will revisit them again in the future. My ideas and understanding and strategy since evolved, and so even though I wasn't actively working on projects - they and myself were still evolving.

orangevelcro 3y ago

Totally agree! I have so many unfinished projects, but I also find that I end up using bits and pieces from those unfinished projects in new stuff. I always learn something from them.

xmprt 3y ago

Thanks for reading! I came to the same conclusion. I don't see people post about their "failures" enough (although true failures are rare because you can always learn something from them) so I figured this would be a good thing to share.

abricq 3y ago
That's true, I guess we see a lot of "success project" and feel ashamed to share our projects with half-started README. But what a great coffee-with-colleague-topic it makes !

codegeek 3y ago

I love to do small projects even if they technically don't finish. Sometimes those are useful later down the road when I am working on a bigger project and that little project comes in handy. For example, I just created my own poor man's CMS in Go that processes Markdown to HTML. A while ago, I had played around basic Go library that does that so I just used it easily in my project without needing to spend too much time figuring out that library.

diggan 3y ago
Sounds like the general definition of "finish" doesn't match with your own. One could "complete" or "finish" a project if the goal was to learn something specific (or general), although others wouldn't considered it finished unless it was deployed and others use it. I think lots of us would be better off if we redefined "finish" to basically mean "done", which you can define however you want :)

RajT88 3y ago

This! I have many unfinished projects. The goal was not to build a thing - it usually was more an excuse to learn. Although sometimes it was to build a thing. I once wrote a podcast downloader in powershell because all the ones out there sucked.

junon 3y ago

Totally this. This approach is why I'm where I'm at in life, I think.

tagami 3y ago

yes, like sketches in art.

rpastuszak 3y ago

+100000 Worst case you’ve learned something new or had fun. I am yet to regret a single instance when I regretted sharing unfinished, scrappy work: https://untested.sonnet.io/Share+your+unfinished%2C+scrappy+work https://untested.sonnet.io/Share+your+unfinished%2C+scrappy+... One approach I really liked was the 2/2/2 rule: 2 hours for a poc → does this even make sense? 2 days for a prototype to share with friends 2 weeks to build something useful (paid if your goal is to charge for it) You can leave the process at any stage. Each stage teaches you something new.

l33t7332273 3y ago
2 hours seems short for a poc, in my experience. What general criteria do you have for such a barebones poc?
abricq 3y ago
Bless your mess !
- rpastuszak 3y ago
  Haha thanks for reading!
el_benhameen 3y ago
Wow, I really like that rule. I’ll often discourage myself from playing with a POC because of how nebulous the timeline can feel. I’m going to this that next time.
- baq 3y ago
  With LLMs nowadays getting a PoC banged out in a couple hours is easier than ever. The things make boilerplate and you can focus on the value.
  - xmprt 3y ago
    Author here and I 100% agree. The reason I was able to get a lot of the prototyping done within the first few days is by using ChatGPT. On the flipside I think the code that it wrote was not very maintainable so I should have started from scratch after validating my PoC.

alkonaut 3y ago

This. I have done this for 30 years and never, ever thought about a side project “this could be a commercial success”. What’s described here is a lot further along than I normally take a project. There is always a more interesting project to make that has no potential of being “successful” than the most interesting idea among potentially successful projects. I think for some people the entrepreneurial angle itself is enough to make a project attractive. But I never quite understood it.

JJMcJ 3y ago
> “this could be a commercial success" Someday maybe, but if not, that's fine anyway because I learned something and had some fun.
gertlex 3y ago
I also never ponder personal projects from a commercial standpoint. But I sure see that narrative here on HN frequently. I have to conclude that most people on HN talking about commercializing are doing purely software projects. My projects very often include hardware. Commercializing hardware+software projects is hard... orders of magnitude harder than just software. That's probably a factor in why the idea of making money from wiring/soldering/dremeling/hacking things is so far from the forefront of my mind. As for what's attractive... novelty and usability/street cred do seem to be my subconcious goals. "Street cred" or even just aspiring to have people use a software tool is certainly a form of non-profitable entrepreneurship.
- hyperthesis 3y ago
  HN began as startup news, and remains part of YC (news.ycombinator.com): commercialization bias.
  - jfil 3y ago
    That's right - remember that the prevailing opinion here is just "one way to be". You are allowed to do things just for fun.
- 3y ago

TheCaptain4815 3y ago

Same here for physical "ideas"/ecommerce stuff. By constantly "failing", I've gotten very efficient at knowing whether an idea or product is worth attempting. I will say there is a certain charm to being ignorant that I've seen bring people success (including myself). I've attempted ambitious SEO projects when I was less experienced and succeeded, and looking back in hindsight they were pretty crazy given the success odds.

hyperthesis 3y ago
I can see becoming more efficient at feeling confident in your opinion, but how can you know you were right - particularly the ones you dismissed? (Though I don't know what else one could do). Never tell me the odds.

forgotmypw17 3y ago

I liked how Sid Meier put it in an interview: > Our philosophy is to find the fun first and do a lot of prototyping and a lot of iterating very early on. There are probably more projects that I've worked on that haven't turned into final games than have. > We have ideas. We have prototypes. We spend a lot of time trying out ideas. Probably two-thirds of them don’t end up going anywhere, but experimenting with those kinds of things is fun. To answer the OP question, I can't find the interview I was looking for now, but I remember that he said that he stops working on a prototype when he realizes that he's learned enough from it.

Verdex 3y ago

I think unfinished projects are important. On a personal level, I've had many unfinished projects that felt (at the time) like failures. At one point in time, I had two different ideas for parse libraries that I had to give up on because I couldn't figure out how to make them work in a way that was remotely useful. However, a few years later, I was able to create a third, otherwise unrelated, project that I realized I could use to unify the previous two. If you're not running into situations where you have to put away a project as unfinished then it might mean that you're not pushing yourself to and beyond your capabilities (which, depending on your goals, can be totally fine). And just because something ends up unfinished, doesn't mean that it might not be able to come back later in a different form.

hyperthesis 3y ago
Reminds me of Feynman saying that when he learnt a new mathematical technique, he'd try it to see if it helped on his unsolved problems.

Madmallard 3y ago

I think these are necessary pre-requisites to larger projects that you may try to bring to market. If it's too daunting and you can't ever finish then the reality is you're probably not yet competent enough. Hayao Miyazaki went through thousands of unfinished short stories and Manga before working at Toei and other studios then he finally developed enough confidence and competence and started hitting homeruns later. It wouldn't have happened without that prior buildup over decades.

szundi 3y ago

I have spent my middle and high-school years writing about 1000 games. Literally. Most of them I just stopped when the interesting part was done. I have kind of finished like 5-6 at all. Best time of my life. Also sometimes wrote (finished) software for companies as a freelancer. Then I finished high-school and started uni where my startup was founded with a friend. I had a successful exit lately.

hyperthesis 3y ago

winners never quit and quitters never win but those who never win and never quit are idiots https://despair.com/products/stupidity https://despair.com/products/stupidity

ihaveajob 3y ago
The corollary is that everyone is an idiot until they win, or quit. Then they're either winners or quitters.
codazoda 3y ago
I might be that idiot. But, whatever. I enjoy my failure enough to try again. https://joeldare.com/how-to-lose-money-with-25-years-of-failed-businesses https://joeldare.com/how-to-lose-money-with-25-years-of-fail...

hyperthesis 3y ago

Learning out of interest is surely the most effective way to learn, by far.