thesephist - how i sideproject

A while ago I read this article and for some reason find it super inspiring. Maybe it's the sheer number of this side-project machine man. Maybe it's cause me and the author are the same age. Maybe I just like hearing about processes of side projects. I can't tell. But here are my notes on it.

Ideas

Have a big list of ideas, and it's fine if you only execute on like 20% of them. Also, it's fine to start projects and fail them. Don't be afraid to open up a repo just for fun.

I find myself not starting projects because I don't want my github followers to see it unfinished. But that's super dumb, and I don't even have a notable amount of followers. Honestly its time to code.

Just pick a good name and do it.

Start when motivation is high

If you really want to work on it, then do. Because after a while, you won't want to, and you might have lost the idea forever. Which is fine too, but why not start when you want to?

I think this is great advice. I always have the most fun when I'm coding something I think is exciting in that moment.

Reduce time-to-deploy

Use a tried and true system to go from nothing to deploy. He has a frontend, backend framework written. He also has a css framework and everything. I think this is dope!

I've been slowly getting into the deploy rhythm, but not on that level yet, I'm looking for ways to improve it though. See my current side project deploy pipeline.

Tooling

Use a small set of tools well.

This is a cool idea as well, and after learning the chrome devtools for UI myself, I've grown to appreciate good tooling. I'll thinking of starting to write my own tools.

You don't know what will resonate

Most popular projects were random one he didn't think would blow up, and were easy technically. But remember to be ambitious.

Totally relate, I can never tell what YouTube video is going to blow up, or what repo gets starred. The beauty is art will resonate with anyone, not just the technically minded. There's only one answer be ambitious.

Share!

You should finally, share your work.

I've been trying to do this, but have so far been pretty unsuccessful to get a good semi-viral share. See side project sharing.