Why developers never finish their projects | Hacker News Reader

Why developers never finish their projects

shamoon.me

14 pointssshamoon18 comments

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.

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. :(

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!

Your life mirrors my own it seems.

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/ 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.

Great point. Writing it down helps commit yourself a bit further. Forces you to think through the process.

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.

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?

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

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.

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

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

> BRAG UNTIL YOU FAIL

See: http://lifehacker.com/5921478/shhh-keeping-quiet-may-help-yo...

In my opinion, the truth may be somewhere in the middle and is probably context dependent (surprise!).

Interesting. I generally don't tell many people about my projects. However that's just the type of person I am - I don't like attention. As mentioned above, I don't have any problem finishing projects. (I work for myself, so I have to be self-motivated and be able to finish crap :)

However I think keeping quiet can actually be a negative in this business. Blowing your own trumpet seems to be a good way to generate hype and funding (which then generates more hype), and that can sometimes be enough to propel a startup to huge success.

Your last point is a good one, but if the person we're talking about doesn't complete projects what's the point of blowing a trumpet about it?

Not disagreeing with you, just offering another perspective. Like I said, I think the truth is somewhere in the middle and is probably a bit more complex.

FTA I linked:

> Four different tests of 63 people found that those who kept their intentions private were more likely to achieve them than those who made them public and were acknowledged by others. [...] Once you've told people of your intentions, it gives you a "premature sense of completeness."

Marketing is a large part of the success of a side project, so while keeping your intentions private may make you more likely to complete your side projects, it's not as likely to make them 'successful' and get you users.

Like you said, the trick is probably somewhere in between.

First, your website isn't working, but I managed to read the article here: 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.

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.

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