The Highs and Lows of Side Projects

by andrewdumont • 14 years ago

106 32 14 years ago

Sharma• 14 years ago

Interesting thoughts. And it felt like I am reading what I always felt. I have created ,sorry, started many side projects but none of them ended properly. Some left out in the middle, for some after starting I just had no vision what to do next with it.

Most of this is due to my day job(full time job). And so lack of motivation or loosing interest was because of the less time I could devote to it.But I still do not agree on :

"a lack of commitment to one thing is just as productive as doing nothing at all."

When you work on side projects you learn new things or you practice old things which makes you perfect. So keep doing something is always better than nothing. Because of these unfinished side projects I was able to learn python, machine learning, data mining, django and so many other tools and technologies which I would have never learned as these are not related to my day job(all java).

So I would still vote for keep doing side projects whether or not you finish it you have something learned in the process.

andrewdumont• 14 years ago

I would argue that it's dependent on what you're trying to accomplish. Sure, you learn a ton, but it still comes back to the issue of how well you can perform when you're trying to juggle a side project, a day job or whatever else you're working on.

Personally, I've found that when I do multiple large projects at once, I sacrifice performance on each. There is a tradeoff in what you learn, but I'm not sure it's an equal tradeoff.

emehrkay2• 14 years ago

I've been working on one for six years now. Id say that it is 70% done -- I just cant bring myself to define, map, and execute that last 30. I'm putting other ideas on hold until I finish this one, ideas that could be viable money makers, but I dont want to leave the original one without at least putting it in front of people who do not know me. I can say that I have learned a lot in the process that will be used for the rest of my career. I'll free myself of this burden by launching in December -- I'll post here as "Look at my 2000 day old startup idea"

gte910h2• 14 years ago

You should find someone else to go through it with you. An outside voice pointing out possible cuts is often a breath of fresh air and helps crystalize things.

cjstewart88• 14 years ago

Glad to know there's others out there with the same understanding on the subject as me.

jfaucett2• 14 years ago

"a lack of commitment to one thing is just as productive as doing nothing at all."

I'd agree with this statement completely. Everything I've built that I'm proud of has always been something where I took my time, had a clear vision, drafted out exactly what I wanted and then didn't just take it on as "just a side project" but when needed, forced myself to see it through to the end.

I think he has some really good points about side projects in general. I think we (or at least myself) can tend to view them as things like hey let me build a framework so I know how to do it, without any clear goals in mind (besides the vague one). Then you do it for a while and afterwards maybe you have learned maybe not, maybe you just give up because you never have the time, and then you wasted the 4 hours you spent starting the project. This is more for myself, but I think when I get an idea now or want to make a side project, I'm going to force myself to sit down, spend the half hour and write down a clear set of goals that I want to achieve, and only after this start.

whatshisface• 14 years ago

"a lack of commitment to one thing is just as productive as doing nothing at all."

If your goal is to build a finished product, yes, this is absolutely true. But if you choose ambitious projects beyond your current expertise, bringing the project anywhere beyond the planning stage will be a valuable experience for the purpose of learning.

Me and most people I know just have side projects for the fun of it. Why do we need strict metrics and goals?

jfaucett2• 14 years ago

what I was trying to say is that I think you need to be committed regardless. Even if your only goal as in your case is to learn something like how compilers work and not to make anything finished, I think we'd benefit by having clearer goals (such as now I want to build a small NFA from regex) and also having the commitment to not give up until we have achieved the goal.

vosper• 14 years ago

Side projects boil down to two types - "for fun" and "for profit (maybe)".

My side projects are like yours; I dabbled for some time with machine learning and AI, despite being under-educated and under-brained. And though my projects never really succeeded I sure did learn a lot, and some of that familiarity helps with (and helped me get) my current job. The rewards were the fun of messing around and trying to understand something, and I didn't need a metric or goal for that.

bennyg• 14 years ago

I think the key to think about side projects, is that they're just that - projects on the side. If it starts taking up full-time hours and responsibility than it's not really a side project anymore. For me, I have my desk job. Then I have my startup I'm trying to turn into my "desk job" if you will. And finally I have my side projects.

These side projects are mostly fun, or the fleshing out of an idea. But I really don't undertake any that would take a ton of time or effort - unless I'm really, really interested in the solution (it hasn't been done or a better perspective on an old idea, etc). This way I don't spend a ton of time - maybe a week of a few hours here and there - to launch it.

edwinnathaniel5• 14 years ago

I went through a little bit of the "lows" in the last couple days on my side project, http://nbaschedules.appspot.com. Yesterday, I sat down and made a few key decisions such as:

- Cutting planned features/Prioritized

- Stay simple

- This is a side project, a side project, a side project

- [important] Making sure it can run with a very minimum time and money forever so it won't just die (hence using GAE, no domain yet).

- Allocate no more than 1-2 hours a day

therealarmen• 14 years ago

Hey, this is a cool project, keep it up. Finding gametimes on the NBA website is a PITA. My only suggestion would be to allow filtering by team (or geolocate based on IP and filter for me automatically).

I'm assuming most visitors are interested in their hometeam's games rather than the league at large.

edwinnathaniel5• 14 years ago

Thank you very much!

I don't know who the visitors are but I'd like to fix the actual "game-time" (normalized to UTC, then convert to visitor's local time) and to add TV schedules as well (USA, Canada, Intl) first before doing other things.

For now, people can bookmark the URL to their favourite team, e.g.: http://nbaschedules.appspot.com/heat.html

Klinky• 14 years ago

What do you struggle with on NBA.com? It's literally one click to get to the day's scores/schedules and it allows filtering by date or team.

example: http://www.nba.com/gameline/20121031/

umjames• 14 years ago

Here's a simple fix:

You currently have the games as <home team> vs <away team>, it would be clearer if it were <away team> at <home team> (with the time zone indicated, preferably eastern time).

edwinnathaniel5• 14 years ago

Thanks for the input!

My plan was to UTC-ed all the time and present them to the visitor based on their local timezone (so no need to convert PST, EST, or even worse for international visitors).

But the concept of <away team> at <home team> is definitely better! Thanks a lot!

edwinnathaniel5• 14 years ago

Done! (minus timezone, will be part of another bigger feature).

MikeTaylor• 14 years ago

I did a part-time Ph.D between 2004 and 2009. I had a plan for what I was going to research, but in the end ALL FIVE chapters of my dissertation ended up being work that started out as side-projects. Along the way, I got to name two new dinosaurs (and revise one of the best-known old ones).

So needless to say, I am a big fan of side-projects. My experience is that I attack them with an enthusiasm that's rarely present when I am doing scheduled work. Often the momentum that that gives can get them to the point where they have enough substance to be wrestled over the finishing line relatively easily.

(Of course that experience won't translate directly to the kind of work you living from.)

Details of my dissertation here if anyone's interested: http://www.miketaylor.org.uk/dino/pubs/#diss

cperciva• 14 years ago

It was really just one side project for me, but my story is similar. I started out planning on doing parallel/distributed supercomputing, but in the middle of my 2nd year I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and spent several months learning to deal with that. During that period I couldn't focus on any "real work", so I allowed myself to get distracted by writing freebsd-update... and by writing bsdiff so that freebsd-update would use less bandwidth.

By the time I started by 3rd year, the fallout from bsdiff -- a new algorithm from matching with mismatches and applications to file synchronization -- was enough that I went to my supervisor and said "so, err, I got a bit side tracked, but I'm wondering if I've just done a thesis worth of research".

jarrett• 14 years ago

I just completed a small side project: A little Ruby gem on Github. And when I say completed, I mean it. It's launched, in use in the wild, and not taking up my time. I started the project last week and finished it over the weekend. I haven't put any effort into it since, and that's not a sign of failure or abandonment. It just means the project is done, barring bug fixes, and that's a good thing.

Sometimes a side project really is just a side project. You do it, you're proud of it, and you move on. I love those kinds of projects.

alexkus3• 14 years ago

Oh for side projects that small.

I started my side project in about 1993. I lost it completely[1] some time around 2000 and decided to rewrite it starting in 2008. Since then I'm still only 20% of the way through it (I probably got to 60% before).

Right now it's dropped way down the priority list below: wife, 2 year old daughter, full-time job, part-time degree (now complete!) and startup (that will hopefully take over from full-time job some time in the future).

1. Long story, I had a backup but the primary and backup were destroyed independently within hours of each other such was my luck.

callmevlad• 14 years ago

Are you willing to share more info on your side project? Sounds like it's something meaningful enough to work on for nearly 20 years (minus gaps), and yet it sounds like it's not your startup... very curious as to what it is.

ww520• 14 years ago

I've just completed an Android app on previous weekend. It's hard to find a good solid block of time to get a project done. I found it hard to even start, fearing it would be started and languished. Luckily there was a hackathon on that weekend, and I used that as an excuse (motivation) to start and finish it.

Staying simple had helped to get it shipped.

Edit: if anyone's interested, here it is. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mhillsyste...

kowsik• 14 years ago

Depends on what your expectations are. I built https://www.delayed-tweets.com for myself and I'm a heavy user of it and I tinker with it when I have time (Heroku + Stripe, if you want to know). If it also becomes a source of income, so be it. Otherwise, it costs me just a little more than using an alternate service to do the same thing (like HootSuite, Buffer, etc). But, I get to tinker with it on the side, learning new things and making little improvements as I have time. So 6 months from now, I don't have to be disappointed that it didn't go anywhere. A side project is exactly that, something that you tinker with while you still have a day job.

LVB• 14 years ago

I don't know what it is about "side-projects". When I think about what I'm doing and why, it is rarely much different than any hobby I've had for as long as I can remember. But hobbies felt much less committal. Sure, I would get consumed by them, but I didn't really get these failure pangs when the plane or rocket sat unfinished for years. Now, it's different. The sludge of half or (worse) almost done projects cluttering my ~/dev folder is a source of some shame, and it can make it difficult to start new things. My best reasoning for why this is: a) there is a constant flood of "Show HN: My Before Morning Coffee HTML5 FPS" type news, which is simultaneously motivating and depressing to read, b) it is very easy to connect the dots between completing a project and some unrealistic outcome, usually involving money or some internet fame.

So I guess I'm basically agreeing with the author. If you want to build a salable product, then focus and do it. But if your really just screwing around because this stuff is neat and it's what you like to do, then call it a hobby and don't worry about it. At least that's what I'm trying to convince myself to do.

gengstrand• 14 years ago

I used side projects mostly for idea validation. For example, I am working on an MDSD system that takes a UML or RDFS model and generates a web 2.0 app written in Google Closure and using XMPP to interact with the application layer. All of these technologies show great promise but none of them have really taken off. http://www.dynamicalsoftware.com/mdsd/closure is where I have documented some of my findings so far in exploring the merit of these three technologies.

The Highs and Lows of Side Projects

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