In January of 2016, I started a project of 100:10:1. This idea was pretty simple in theory, but hard in execution. I first wrote a post collecting one hundred ideas. I talked them over with friends, and then set off on #tenbysix. Ten by Six was an attempt to build ten minimal viable projects in six months.
What went wrong
The first three months were relatively productive. I was dealing with a crazy work schedule, so I was incredibly scatterbrained. The nice thing is that I had ten projects I could constantly dance between. As soon as work calmed down though, I just stopped coding. I was burnt from work and just wanted to sleep. My alcohol consumption was also higher during this time (partially out of celebration, partially out of "oh god, I'm going to have to do this again?"), which I tend to find is a not great state to code. When I'm drunk I wanna listen to music or watch TV or talk to people, not solve some weird coding problem I am having.
To close out my #tenbysix excursion, I've decided to walk through each one and talk about what I built and what I learned, despite definitely not working six full months.
Projects
I made no progress on this. I think this was a great example of trying to learn to many things at once. If I had just focused on the aggregation aspect, and not also playing with Go and React, I would have made more progress. That being said, I learned more about React.
I learned about the Circle of Fifths and how it's easy to throw piano cords together. Didn't quite get it working though. I'm constantly surprised at how hard sound in Javascript still is.
I got the very basics of this working, and I realized this isn't something I actually want.
I thought a lot about this project. An insane amount. It's the project I talked to people the most about... but I did not get very far on it. I still have lots of ideas, but I just haven't executed at all.
Lots of thought, but no execution. Still the thing my friends want most, and the thing I haven't been able to devote enough time to. I'm not entirely sure where to start actually.
This actually totally works. I ended up using some of the stuff I thought about in this at work too, which was nice.
I wrote some stuff, so that was nice.
Got the basics working, but never finished. This was my one hope of making money this year.
This works perfectly. I'm surprised at how easy this was. I need to expand this.
Got the basics working, and this is still something I want to think about and get working. Plus it has a great name.
Future
Ok, so that list was mainly for me. More of a brain dump than anything, but it worked. Moving forward, I'm thinking of partaking in what I'll be calling #threebyfive. 3 x 5 will be an attempt to focus on three projects over five months. So by the end of the year, I'll feel good about three smallish projects.
I originally wanted to do three by three, but July is almost over. To show how busy I've been, it's taken me nearly a month to just sit down and write this post. I do really like my job, but it's been taking all of my brain power.
My three projects will be a music storage service, a cloud hosting service, and a location based game. I'll be writing more about them as I try to get back in the swing of writing every week. The idea is publish design docs for all three, and start slowly building. I think for all three, they excite me so much, I get scope creep in my brain, and then I don't know where to start.
Anyways, that's my brain dump on coding projects from January till now. On into the future! Wish me luck!
/Nat