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Comment by __alias | Hacker News Reader

This article made me laugh because it's synonymous to me trying to start a project and going down different rabbit holes.

The author at step 1. of a project trying to pick the tech stacks, decides to read a book on databases to help with choosing a DB

Then proceeds to segue to writing his own database.

Then writes a blog about said process

I wonder how that original project has come along? I'm looking forward to when the author gets to the stage of picking a frontend framework

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Yak Shaving: https://seths.blog/2005/03/dont_shave_that/

When doing personal projects I have to constantly be reeling myself back in from doing x thing "The Right Way", because I end up doing a bunch of useless crap and not actually making progress on the personal project.

Easy to fall into that trap when 1) it's just you and 2) there is little accountability because it's just you!

My tactic for pushing back against this is to try to trick myself into doing the simplest thing that might still work. It's a challenge to write "bad" code on purpose. The opposite of chasing perfect/clean.

I have found that this frees up a lot of weird expectations that you place yourself under. You can get much more creative when everything is a dumb-ass-simple public static member vs when you are spending 2 hours a day fighting a cursed IoC/DI abstraction simply because you are worried that clean code Jesus might be watching you.

It helps to have an end goal too. It's really easy for me to push through a messy prototype when I can see it bringing me closer to a strategic objective.

Bingo. First get it working, then get it right, then get it fast. It's for this reason that almost all of my projects start with a SQLite database - it's a program I'm very familiar with, like an old reliable chef's knife.

Don't forget about the part where you actually do start on the project, but then you read one article or find another tool/software package that makes you second guess everything you've already done and you go back down another rabbit hole.

IME this "second-guessing" is more often right than wrong. You can always return to a project that motivates you, but you can't get back time spent digging a hole deeper, and often it leads to tunnel vision and bad habit formation.

Not every "project" needs to become "finished" or "product".

My problem is scope creep. It's much harder to tell myself no vs. being on an engineering team at a company and there being a set process.

It is pretty funny. That said, if it's just a personal project then sometimes it's more about the journey -- smelling every flower is the enjoyable part of the journey. Sometimes.

I mentioned smelling the flowers because I look to young kids for reminders about the little things we sometimes forget to enjoy along the way, even if it's just the short journey from the car to the house. When you're not in a hurry, remember to enjoy the wonderful things that lie in your path.

Yeah this is me too apart from the writing a blog part because, uh, why would I want to expose the rest of humanity to my insanity?

One day :)

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