Now, almost 20 years later, I find I want to preserve something from the old days before it all looked like, well, gestures around wildly. It would be a relief not to maintain the site anymore. But I feel like I'd be disappointing a lot of people, as well. I have no idea how long I'm going to keep this going.

The critical thing is what the author says:

> always make sure that you're doing them for yourself, and for the right reasons

For me my side projects are generally something to have fun with and something to learn new things with. When you're finding it a slog or you feel like you've learnt what what you need to it's fine to just dump it.

Actually finishing something is of course nice and for beginners in particular there's a lot of value in going from that it's mostly there just some loose ends to tie off stage to the actually done stage but you don't have to always do this (or indeed just do it in some select cases).

Now when I put something aside I know there's a chance I might pick it up again in ten years. There wasn't much evidence of that when I was twenty-five.

It's been one of the best things for me about middle age.

I did find it to be a funny twist that, in the act of building the app, he taught himself the thing that the app was supposed to teach him when it was done.

Here’s my own “graveyard” of projects just from the last few months: https://mesmer.tools/ that immediately got the highest domain ranking I have of all my sites(38), even ones making money

You never know when your abandoned side project is somebody else's treasure. I guess open source + let somebody vibe code to completion is the right way.

If you are doing this for your own entertainment and learning, take it as far as pleases you. I have plenty of half finished things. I like picking one and doing some 'gardening' when I feel like it. Sometimes when I have low energy and I need to snap out of that, I just start doing simple stuff. Maybe I'll update dependencies on a project I haven't touched for ages. Or there's a bit of documentation that annoys me and I fix it. I'll see what needs doing, can use improving, etc.

There's a system to my madness where sometimes I find a use for disconnected bits of software in a business context. And sometimes that never happens and that's fine too. I abandon things as well. Mostly if I don't enjoy working on something, it just gets less and less of my attention. I have well over a hundred github projects at this point. Only a few of them have any traction at all. But once in a while I'll get a random issue report or PR on one that I haven't touched in years and that's all it takes for me to pick up where I left off.

Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,

But like the author, I've come around to seeing this as feature, not bug. My day job rarely includes the technologies or domains I want to explore, so side projects became my way of learning new stacks deeply. The funny thing is — abandoned or not, that exploration showed up on my CV. I've landed harder, more interesting roles specifically because I'd "played with" the stack on a never-shipped project.

The shipping isn't the point. The depth of the dive is.

It's OK to abandon your side-project - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39500386 - Feb 2024 (79 comments)

Let it go, be free!

Now I usually just add a static landing page, some screenshots how it looked like and turn of the backend (Example: https://getbirdfeeder.com) which makes me feel better about it.

I asked Claude and ChatGPT about it, and they both shot the idea down as a viable startup. It was a liberating feeling honestly! I have since focused my efforts on other projects and have been more successful with those.

This has been my experience, but most of it is still arduous work, if the goal is to push the limits and learn something new.

I am not talking about vibe-coding a throwaway prototype.

You don't want to open source it? Don't. You want to open source it but not build a community? Don't build a community. You don't even have to answer to requests.

You don't even have to disable the PR on your forge.

You don't even have to explain clearly in the README how you envision it and show any kind of commitment.

You do you, open sourcing is already nice.

Too many "tales of side-projects that grew into successful businesses" can narrow your understanding of what it actually means. I agree that it's OK to abandon a side project, but it is a much deeper reflection.

Pro tip for enjoying your life at work: this also applies to you work projects. Once you realize this, you can have a lot more fun at work and even coerce work projects to be more like your for-fun/side projects. Of course this is detrimental to the company as a whole, but your company almost definitely does not care about you and you might as well extract as much enjoyment as possible.

If your coworkers are actually passionate about programming (i.e. not drones or PM brains running flowchart to increase quarterly profit), you can even make work more enjoyable for them.

Things like unconventional language choices, over-engineering of systems, unusual coding styles, obscure protocol/library use, and of course a ton of NIH can really spice up a mundane codebase.

Even stretching an "easy" module into a masterfully crafted program and going 4x over estimation can be fun sometimes (without any of the bad design choices suggested above).

Yes I stand by this bad advice, and it's allowed me to play with so much technology I would never otherwise touch at day job.

I'll tell you. I forget stuff.

So when I pick up that Openweather tool after three years of not touching it to quickly change the output a bit, I can be pretty sure the overly robust scaffolding around the project won't let me break anything.