

How do you start a big project? - ianamartin

I&#x27;ve got an idea for something I want to do for my family. That&#x27;s it. That&#x27;s all there is to it. I want to do a web app that can tell my family who is related to whom, how we are related (I have a really huge family), and allow us to share important announcements.<p>It&#x27;s got a genealogy component; it&#x27;s got a small social component.<p>My career so far has been 7 years of database guy, and 3 years of c# and python.<p>I&#x27;ve always worked on other people&#x27;s stuff. Sure I have toy projects here and there.<p>My question is this: how do you start a new thing from scratch?<p>Everything is so important. There&#x27;s login. There&#x27;s security. There&#x27;s the front end and how it looks, there&#x27;s the backend. What&#x27;s the best database structure. There is everything.<p>Where do you start? How do you get started?<p>I think I have all the skills, and I think I can do this. But I don&#x27;t know where to start.
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Start small and grow it.

I don't have the link handy, (someone else, please post it!) but I've seen it
on HN before. There is a site that has the screenshots of a lot of famous
sites before they were famous. They're shit. Heck, I can remember when
Facebook didn't use HTTPS and you could rip passwords out of the air of your
local college student union.

Even if you don't intend for this to become famous, start somewhere!

Just start working on it, and aim to release something that a non-tech user
can use every 1 or 2 weeks. Don't do a time period longer than that, or you'll
get stuck back in analysis paralysis.

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joeyspn
Usually I start small and with only a golden rule: use the tools that will
allow me to save time and money. This means using PaaS during the take-off and
focusing on dev.

Since you already know python consider using a django boilerplate[1] for your
webapp. You can deploy it for free with a nice plan (better than heroku) in
GAE.

My 0.02

[0]
[http://www.fullstackpython.com/django.html](http://www.fullstackpython.com/django.html)

[1] [http://appengine.beecoss.com](http://appengine.beecoss.com)

