http://mentalpandiculation.com/2010/03/writing-software-to-show-my-mom/ One Man's Attempt To Find Elegant Code Through Big Words Tue, 28 Jun 2011 01:37:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 http://mentalpandiculation.com/2010/03/writing-software-to-show-my-mom/comment-page-1/#comment-142 Latish Sehgal Thu, 01 Apr 2010 15:28:21 +0000 http://mentalpandiculation.com/?p=256#comment-142 This sounds familiar :). I think most programmers are distracted by shiny new things easily. And isn't that the way it should be? I mean I would be wary of working with a programmer who is not excited by new and better framerorks, platforms... I think one of the problems (bigger than feedback IMO) we face in personal projects is that there are no deadlines. In our corporate jobs, the deadline to deliver the software is always yesterday, and forces us to concentrate and deliver. Your timeline for a year might be too relaxed. Can't you practise the Agile/Iterative methodologies that you do at work in your personal projects and ship something in 2 months? This way, if you are still motivated after that, you keep on working on it. If you find something better to do, you take a break and move on to a new one, and reevaluate/revisit this in the future. This might also be the right time to get some feedback. As Derek Sivers has pointed out, execution is of utmost importance (http://sivers.org/multiply). This sounds familiar . I think most programmers are distracted by shiny new things easily. And isn’t that the way it should be? I mean I would be wary of working with a programmer who is not excited by new and better framerorks, platforms…
I think one of the problems (bigger than feedback IMO) we face in personal projects is that there are no deadlines. In our corporate jobs, the deadline to deliver the software is always yesterday, and forces us to concentrate and deliver. Your timeline for a year might be too relaxed. Can’t you practise the Agile/Iterative methodologies that you do at work in your personal projects and ship something in 2 months? This way, if you are still motivated after that, you keep on working on it. If you find something better to do, you take a break and move on to a new one, and reevaluate/revisit this in the future. This might also be the right time to get some feedback.
As Derek Sivers has pointed out, execution is of utmost importance (http://sivers.org/multiply).

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