

Why developers never finish their projects - sshamoon
http://shamoon.me/why-developers-never-finish-their-projects/

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junto
The article and many of the comments remind me of me. I have less ideas these
days. I think having kids has numbed my creative brain quite a lot.

One major factor that nearly always halted my projects in their tracks was
self criticism. I would pick little holes in good ideas until they became big
holes and the project would die.

~~~
testimoney
Being a father/mother takes a lot of time. Since my daughter was born, my
average number of idea / week, became average number of ideas / year.

I'm just exausted, and by the time she falls asleep (which is between 9-10pm
because she has problems sleeping), I'm tired, do a couple of chores, and just
want to play Battlefield. And then I wake up at 7.40am the next day. :(

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killertypo
Lots of people have lots of great ideas and it's hard to build them all to a
satisfying state. Just look at some of the greatest artists and inventors of
history (Davinci comes to mind). So many inventions / paintings...etc started
and left unfinished. So many ideas just written down (great ones at that) and
left to rot.

There seems to be this disconnect between an idea and a product, like somehow
some great developer sits down and in a weekend blasts out a fully featured
product using RoR or some other whizbang tooling.

Most people spend weeks and months developing an idea from a scribble on a
piece of paper or tissue to a featured product.

All we see is the finished end-result. Developers hold themselves to some
impossibly high standard where they believe that because someone on the
internet created what looks like a great website and product over the weekend
that they should be able to as well (and I would question how great a product
or site is really created in the timespan of a single weekend, good maybe, but
fully featured and ready - doubtful).

This is a farce and only seeks to hurt ones progression. Truthfully most will
have many many many (dozens if not hundreds) of great ideas and no time to
build them. Life comes and goes, and it's better to pay attention to what
matters in the here and now.

I have a wife and two kids, A brother with four kids, a mom and a dad,
extended family out the ass. So what I can't turn some great turnkey solution
or game idea into a finished project. Who cares that I have countless github
projects left halfway completed.

I got to watch my daughter crawl for the first time, eat dinner with my wife
and kids, enjoy the sun on my neck. I'll find the project / passion that
really clicks and I will want to set aside more time for it eventually - but
until them I'm not too worried about what I do and do not finish.

I am just happy that my passion (developing) allows me to have so many great
ideas and allows me to try and solve the worlds problems one line of code at a
time!

~~~
sshamoon
Your life mirrors my own it seems.

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johnmurch
I know for me personally this is something that I have been struggling with
and have been trying to fix. Writing ideas down and then "letting them go"
rather than diving deep into coding, write up potential features, build a
landing page showcasing those features/etc and then capture feedback/signup
and see if it sparks interest.

People have created assemblymade.com and
[https://ramen.is/](https://ramen.is/) which is pretty slick for a developer
to get some traction by putting the idea out there and seeing if people are
interested as well as creating some way to capture potential users

On the flip side, just because you CAN code something, doesn't mean you
SHOULD.

~~~
spacemanmatt
There is a time in most coders' lives when things get coded to confirm a)
mastery of the implementing language b) feasibility matched estimate c) coder
is worthy. This is a healthy thing to do, but also to grow out of.

These days I work in idea rather than code. I plan things I will not execute
to see what they look like on paper. I scheme on things I will not put my
personal time into because I can't afford it. Some of my plans are getting
good enough to try on other people or in business. But I still experiment for
the learning value. This doesn't make it a waste, or make me lazy. But if I
don't ever get better and get out of this mode, I am indeed wasting my time.

HTH.

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jason_slack
Well, I have a lot of projects that are partially finished. Within the last
year I decided to stick to a single project until it is released.

I keep a binder of "ideas" now and it is overflowing a 3 inch, 3 rind binder.
It lets me get on paper what I was excited about that that exact moment. Then
transition back to what I set out to release.

BTW. Love the image of the folders with blurred out names. How did you come up
with that?

~~~
sshamoon
Just took a screenshot of my folder and blurred out the names with Skitch

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GilbertErik
I clicked on the link within an hour of the article being posted and the page
wasn't loading properly. I thought that's what it was supposed to do and it
was a clever commentary on the fact that this page wasn't finished.

~~~
sshamoon
Ha. I wish I was that clever. I had to spin up another server to handle the
traffic

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sshamoon
What do you think? Do I have a point? Am I way off?

~~~
cpncrunch
First, your website isn't working, but I managed to read the article here:
[https://medium.com/p/bf39d3424114](https://medium.com/p/bf39d3424114)

My myself, I don't have a problem finishing my side-projects. The problem is
actually getting people to use them once I have completed them. You just can't
predict what will be successful (twitter is an excellent example, as well as
whatsapp, instagram, etc).

For myself I was quite lucky in that my very first side-project took off and
I've been earning an income out of it for the last 15 years. However every
other project I've come up with since then has failed miserably, except for
ones related to my core product. Now I mainly try to spend my time improving
my existing products and adding features that my customers are asking for,
rather than trying to dream up new ones.

Still, I do come up with ideas for amazing new products every month or two - I
think that's just the nature of being an entrepreneurial, creative developer.
Usually when I do some research I find that someone else has done something
very similar already, so I don't waste too much time developing something that
will be a dead-end.

~~~
xur17
I typically build something with users, and where to market already in mind.
Both times I created a proof of concept, and presented it to users after a
short weekend of coding, so I could see how well the idea 'stuck', and then
built from there.

