How to ACTUALLY SHIP side projects?

⏰ Quick jump
00:01 How do you start a project?
02:40 Showing off sketches of the current project
03:24 Lower your quality standards
04:35 Concerns about code quality at the beginning
09:17 Focus on prototyping
10:39 Concerns about introducing new tools
12:31 Commentary about Proof of Concepts
12:56 Importance of immediate feedback for smooth development
14:25 Feedback and Dopamine
16:10 Bugfixing motivation
19:56 Feedback loop segmentation
21:08 Ending and conclusion

📝 Episode notes

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Content Topics revolve around: JavaScript, Functional Programming, Software Architecture, Quality Processes, Developer Career and Health, Team Collaboration, Software Development, Project Management

[lebulle]

Lower my quality standard?


Say no more

[jonathansilva]

This tip to push through to the delivery goal is the best! We keep adding distractions and reasons to keep coding and ruminating the code, meanwhile we lose motivation due to lack of feedbacks.

[GurbyTheGreat]

Use typescript, and just allow implicit anys, plain javascript is just brutal. You save a lot of time fixing/avoiding time consuming bugs.

[Oswee]

Yeah.. kinda same there... after "refactoring" the thing million times i came to conclusion that i should invest into prototyping. Until prototype will not cover 80% of what i want to achieve, i will not invest a single minute into coding. Totally agree about distracting perfectionism. Same illness there... TypeScript, Git, linters, builders, what not... it's just eats up everything. The prototype will show the patterns and high level overview. And prototyping is fun. It's like gives you that satisfaction quickly.. the feel how it will work, clarity of architecture... etc, etc.

[Gigusx]

Cool video, very useful!
I could use some dopamine kicks during the mundane parts of coding. I love writing/drawing the project our on paper, coming up with ideas, and coding the core of the project. But when it comes to polishing stuff, even finishing things up on the front-end, I get really bored and usually drop the project. It's mostly personal and practice stuff where there aren't any risks involved, so once I've figured the interesting parts out and solved the main problems, I don't feel like working on the easiest, remaining parts.

[zawarudowryyyyyy]

It sounds like in theory TDD is supposed to be the functional equivalent to what the sketching does for your project's form and vision. Then again I don't even code in my own development job, so what do I know? 😄

[nevrcore]

The Circle CI link in the description does not appear to be correct

[dimagurkalenko]

Hello MPJ,
Could you please make a video about your environment setup, VS Code extensions and other tools that you're using?
That would be super-interesting! Thanks

[kunjchoksi]

Hi MPJ...
Please make some videos about design patterns in javascript..

[PapaLazarou]

I don't want to conflate dopamine-reward & aiming for the nice feeling of having completed something, with doing a poor job when you know how to do better.

[lebulle]

I've always found it incredibly annoying when I need to specify type and I'm not able to just use <any> in Typescript. I spend just 10 minutes looking for the most abstract type that I can't find. At the end, it's so abstract what is even the point of including the type.


I get it, very important in a serious project.
But for side projects, why bother.

[ietsization]

haha honestly, analysis paralysis is the almost the most enjoyable thing for me. Then again, I've never shipped anything, maybe that's why... :)

[taylora.buckner]

Bro i love your channel/content, but I have to say I disagree with avoiding TS/Unit Testing.

What I DO agree with is being fast and dirty and working w/ the tools you know best. It's hard to avoid 'analysis paralysis' or getting caught in the rabbit hole of adding cool tooling to your project where it's not really needed.

That dopamine rush of shipping a functional feature is what hooked me on development to begin with. Luckily with content creators like yourself, we can glom inspiration from articles, videos, repos, whatever and let that drive the future.

Don't. Ever. Stop.