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Comment by fuball63 | Hacker News Reader

Semi related to this, if you do code after work (because you enjoy it), it's OK to code without it being a "startup".

I often get bogged down with "how do I monetize, market, and maintain this", which just kills my motivation. Just because something isn't marketed and monetized doesn't make it invalid; outside of work coding has brought me numerous benefits:

- Learning new things. Not because I feel like if I don't I'll fall behind, but because I like learning things I don't get to experience at work.

- Expressing yourself. I like being able to execute on my vision without worrying about what my employer wants. Or, if its a game I'm making, using that coding to express an artistic vision.

- Meeting people. You can still talk about your project at meetups or online without trying to "sell" it.

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I think it's only the HN crowd that tries to look at side-projects from the monetization angle. (How else do you explain the frequent 'what's your side-business' posts? Also, this is a VC's site after all.) There are many computing cultures - people making games for gamejams, working on quines, writing code for GameBoys, contributing to Firefox, Arduino hackers. Maybe finding one of those groups will change your mindset?

FWIW, I make money hacking on Arduino :-)

What do you do, if you don’t mind me asking?

Same as any other type of programming: write code for people who can't.

I'm curious about the proportion of people who started visiting HN because of ycombinator vs those who came just because someone told them it had good discussions.

I'm of the latter group.

I came through pg's essays on Lisp (and not startups!), stayed for the discussions.

I think this happens because the term "side-project" has a lot of possible interpretations:

- Hobby project to play with some tech just because you find interesting

- Hobby project to play with some tech that might help your career in the future

- Homework project to learn about the tech you currently use at work

- For-profit project to hopefully earn some extra money

- For-profit project to hopefully earn enough money to allow you to quit your day job (my case now)

- Portfolio-making projects to show at job-interviews as a junior developer (my case a couple of years ago)

All of them seems legit if your decision to do them is personal. But some of them might be prone to abuse by employers

No I would have taken side project or gig - to absolutely mean a moneymaking enterprise.

Or, that's it for me personally, coding what I want, with no deadlines, managers or 'agile' strategy, is really a lot of fun.

> I often get bogged down with "how do I monetize, market, and maintain this", which just kills my motivation.

If someone is thinking that way, then they aren't engaging in a hobby, they're engaging in a startup. That's two different things.

I used to fall into this way of thinking before I recognized what a trap it actually is. Now, when I start a hobby project, I intentionally ignore possible monetization of it. If I feel a strong urge to monetize, then I move it out of my recreation time and into my work time.

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