Hey guys. This article isn't meant to be helpful, or motivational, or really have a point at all. I'm just feeling a whole lotta love for code right now and I want to let it out.
I took the weekend to focus on two pet projects. Neither of these projects are going to make me any money or advance my career in any way. They're just fun.
But you know what's fucking awesome? I was able to just have an idea, and bring it to LIFE (well, almost).
I've wanted to code a particular app since I was a beginner - a Tinder for Spotify, which would help people discover new music in a fun way. So this weekend I thought I'd give it a shot, and I literally got the whole thing working already. It's wild. When I was a beginner and had this idea, I had no idea how I would have achieved it. And now I can. In LESS THAN TWO DAYS. It's just so fucking cool.
Another project I started working on was a new gif library (because I hate Facebook and Facebook bought Giphy). I decided to make the backend with Go, because I had never used Go before and thought it would be a fun project to help me learn. And it was just awesome. Go is awesome. Learning a new coding language is the best thing ever - it reminded me of being a beginner and having that feeling when you finally get your code working, but without all the other shit that comes with being a beginner.
Coding has brought me so much joy and opportunity. And so much of that comes from the dumb pet project ideas I have and am able to bring to completion. It's just absolutely mindblowingly cool to have an idea and see it pan out right in front of your eyes. Like, I'm building shit. From the bottom up. By myself. My OWN IDEA. It's MY THING!
Man. It's so cool.
Anyway, yeah. Keep coding. Keep creating. Keep having dumb ideas and making them real. It is genuinely the best feeling ever.
(PS people seem to love Tinder for Spotify so I will be releasing it on App Store & Google Play in about a month.)
Top comments (18)
I vibe with this 😎 Creating the goofy/silly one-off projects for me is the best - such a great way to create and learn while staying motivated!
Hell yeah. As much as coding can be a tiring and frustrating activity due to complexity which never goes away, I can't imagine giving up this super power of understanding on some level how the world works in a way you just can't if you don't understand software.
Yeah a great many years ago for me I also realized: creation without materials or manual dexterity is why I also fucking love coding :)
Even better for me is when I revisit a material idea I never got around to because "man, that's gonna be so fucking hard!" and can now look at it and (thanks to advances in technology and my own skill set) say "man, that's gonna be so fucking easy!" Well, maybe not totally easy, but so much easier than they would have been back then.
(hint: such ideas involve Raspberry Pis and mobile apps, things which either didn't exist or I was no good at when I first had the ideas)
Yew! I have no idea how I'd be surviving this isolation in Australia if it wasn't for coding and the winning vibes with pet projects.
(Probably would have watched the thirty Netflix series with my housemates)
Same! And it's such a good feeling to start a sideproject and then manage to get it to work 🙌 None of the (relatively small) sideprojects I'm working on will bring me any income or whatever, but it's so much fun doing it ❤️
It's nice to be able to just make something simply because you want to make it, and not because you're bound by some contractual obligation to do so, and then they get all the fame and fortune in the end.
Congrats for feeling this way, when you love something everything comes smoothly.
Did someone inspire you to learn Go?
I had this imperious need to learn Go and I just fall in love with it, but haven't got any time yet to learning it in deep.
Can you share your learning curve about it?
You are awesome, your love and fiery enthusiasm for the craft of coding is music to this formerly burnt out game industry vet. I have to set circumstances so that I feel that enthusiasm and thrill as it's been Hell trying to get the flow going against the PTSD (which I suffer from for violence related trauma) like procrastination of having burnt out twice working for AAA studios. My current project is a labor of love, very dear to me which might lead to some commercial opportunities or financing from local government programs as I'm designing it to be a reusable framework, turnkey scalable security oriented social media. The first iteration is meant to help sex workers work in a safer manner by engaging in their security and that of their peers in a proactive manner that will leave them in total control of the info they share. If self deployed timer events, chosen contacts will have all the shared info on hand to either decide to intervene themselves or call in Law enforcement. It will be open source :)
Ooooh, great idea, Spotinder !
Hahaha I’ve been debating about the name for far too long. Decided to go with Swipe Jam!
Did you pull Swipe Jam again? Just read the blogpiece and wanted to try it out but cant find it on Google play :(
Seconding this vibe 🙏🏾. The joy and challenge of going from thought bubble to any kind of software never gets old 👍🏾.
Been cyclically rediscovering it for a bit more than 40 years now