I came up with idea where instead of typing stuff like “5/6” “6*9” into the terminal, you could have gui interface.
Most times I find that these projects are either old or badly made (often both). If you’re inspired and you feel like you can make them better, then go for it.
An artist isn’t going to refrain from painting a portrait of a dog if other artists have already painted dog portraits, so why should you?
Then a while later you go back and look at what you did and realize it’s old and badly made.
Then you pat yourself on the back for inspiring the next dev that comes across your project
A project doesn’t have to be unique as a whole. You can always take an already existing idea and add your own twist to it (new UI, new feature, better optimisation, etc). What’s important is actually doing something instead of being stuck in an infinite loop of brainstorming idea.
when i created a side project, someone else already did it but they had a flaw in their design, so i created my version to fix the flaw
Guess that depends on what your goal is. Are you doing it for fun? Or for money? If it’s the latter it’s all in the marketing.
Steve Jobs said “you don’t have to do it better, just different”.
Yeah Apple’s marketing is incredible
Turns out that fruit doesn’t cure cancer either
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Who cares if it already exists, just make it.
Also consider the possibility when the other, more popular projects got enshittified. Now the fleeing users have an option to switch to your project. It actually happened on one of my side project. I made it because I want to try building my own version of X. It got ~2000 users, but later down the road, X got sold to a new shitty owner that waste no time to enshittify it, and my side project suddenly grow to 20,000 users overnight.
This makes me want to revive some of my comatose projects.
X? Social media? /j
third panel: end up doing it anyway because it’s fun
This is the correct answer
4th panel, you did a great job but nobody gives a shit
So? You did it because it’s fun, not because you wanted a pat on the back.
There are some projects that are just for you, and others you hope people will get use out of / enjoy
I’ve built little things that already have a solution when that other solution either didn’t do it the way I had in mind or did more things than I needed it to. It really depends on how you’re valuing your time and knowledge/experience in the end.
Try to add 100+ things to make it very big project, then dropped without even completing 10% of to-do list.
Eventually you get a better idea to start the same project from scratch, then drop it.
Sometimes starting from someone else’s code and stripping only to the functions you need is fun!
That’s how you find that one variable that isn’t used anywhere but breaks everything if you remove it.
Then you fill the fucking code with print statements because you don’t know to use debug, realize the variable feeds some stupid fucking function that does nothing but has to be there and a few hours later comment out said print statements and just re add the variable.
You know, it occurs to me that doing that with print really isn’t any different than the accepted method of debug logging other than where the output is directed to.
or you realize that the idea fundamentally wouldnt work. i wanted to build a lemmy music recognition bot until i remembered lemmy has no videos lmao
Instead, you can try to extend the existing project with new features, possibly improving your code reading skills and discovering new practices
Execution is what matters, not ideas. Anyone can half-ass an idea and say “I did it first” but whoever comes along and does it right is who gets remembered.
Maybe OP could also try if he could contribute to existing projects.
But now you have the opportunity to build it in Rust or Typescript! /s
This but unironically
This is my project. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
My project is my best work. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life.
Without me, my project is useless. Without my project, I am useless.
Take off the /s and do it!!
I really need to learn Rust…
You will get there one day, I believe in you :)
It’s difficult but worth the time if you have it. No other language creates programs with such guarantees for not having common memory bugs and performance like c.
If it sounded cool to do, I do it anyway, and keep it to myself. Never have to clean that shit up. Unfinished? Who gives a fuck, I did it, job sorted.
If it sounded like it needed to exist… thank god, someone else did it for me! Not my problem. git clone, next idea.
Think of it this way: If there’s loads of implementations of an idea, it means there’ss already a market/need for it!
Yeah don’t let this stop you! If you do the side project for fun and/or learning, just go ahead and build stuff. Don’t look at other projects too soon so you give space to your own creativity. But perhaps compare stuff in a later stage.
This is a great perspective. I have definitely fallen into this meme’s sentiment many times. You have to remind yourself that it doesn’t matter.
give space to your own creativity
This is key. One will inevitably make many different design and UX decisions vs whatever preexisting projects are out there, making one’s project more suited to at least a few contexts than anything preexisting.
In addition to being plain demotivating, looking at other stuff too early basically encourages one to just make the same decisions as others, becoming much more like just a second implementation of what already exists.
Someday people might look at your project and become demotivated at their own, and the cycle continues
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