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Comment by japhyr | Hacker News Reader

Writing programs that people actually use.

I was a hobbyist programmer for a long time. Then my father passed away, and I went through his computer and saw all these projects that would never see the light of day. That gave me the motivation to choose one project and see it through until it was good enough to have actual users. Programming is much more satisfying and meaningful now.

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Do not overlook this comment. Between a flood destroying all of my physical property, a minor health-scare, a few far-too-early deaths in my friends and family, and having a kid, the concept of my own mortality is now firmly established. I started thinking about the few things I did have, and who would take them. I realized the vast majority of my "stuff" is parts and code for nascent projects. There are a lot of them. And they will get thrown away. They are valueless to anyone else.

So to me that means that I need to focus and do one thing at a time.

We are a sum of our parts and I probably wouldn't have as great of an appreciation for the time I have left if I hadn't wasted so much time. I still get a lot of time to code, but damn, my single 20s were a whole different world.

After supporting a side project that had hundreds of users, I was actually relieved to go back to projects that had at most only a handful of users. Support requests and demands for bug fixes can get tiring if you don't have an apparatus to help control and triage them.

I can understand how you feel. I made a chrome extension for fun and one of the user claims my extension has malicious tracking code and ads injector out of the blue (perhaps he got the malware from other extension and blame it on mine). Way to kill motivation :/

Did you finish that project yet? If so, would you mind sharing it?

It took two pivots to find a project I could "finish". I've been a math and science teacher for a long time, so my strongest projects are education-related. I spoke about a project that would allow people to write and maintain education standards on an open platform. People were really interested in that project, and it led to an invitation to write a book for No Starch Press. I outlined an intro Python book, and the proposal was accepted.

I spent two years writing, and Python Crash Course was published last fall. It's been really well received, which is tremendously satisfying. I've enjoyed the steady stream of emails from readers since it was published. Finishing the book has opened a number of doors, and it's fun to be working on a second career at this point. I like the mix of programming and writing.

No Starch Press page: https://www.nostarch.com/pythoncrashcourse

Amazon: amazon.com/Python-Crash-Course-Project-Based-Introduction/dp/1593276036/

I just finished reading your book. Too many programming books focus on answering "how does this work?" I like your book because it focuses just as much on answering "what can I use this for?". Good work and congratulations on having it published!

this reminds me of the "what makes work meaningful" thread on hn a few days ago! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12177747

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