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Ben Halpern
Ben Halpern

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Do you prefer starting new projects or working on existing ones?

Green field or brown field?

Oldest comments (29)

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Jim Medlock

Both! I get a lot of satisfaction working on existing project that I believe in and am passionate about. But, I also work on new projects because our growth is limited if we don't broaden our horizons.

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Pachi 🥑

I like starting things but mostly because I always feel lost jumping into something already going on.

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Ben Halpern

What makes you feel lost?

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Pachi 🥑

A little of newbie Syndrome ? Like having to learn and understand what the other people done to the project and how I make meaningful contributions.
It is probably fear tbh

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Ben Halpern

This is all pretty normal. Ideally people involved in the project can provide as much guidance and empathy as possible. And otherwise merely hanging around where discussions happen goes a long way.

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Pachi 🥑

Guess I got a find a project!!!

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Jingles (Hong Jing)
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Yogini Bende

Relatable! I get stuck at understanding the logic, the code practices followed and end-up asking so many questions to fellow devs. This initial phase makes you a little uncomfortable and you start getting into the imposter syndrome zone but once you pass this, every time you get to learn so much out of this.

I personally prefer starting projects from scratch but I have started to contribute to the existing projects whenever possible.

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Swastik Baranwal

Depends. If I get better experience and meet new people on working on existing ones or make something on my own to not have built on not making anything myself.

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Sumit Kharche

No matter the project is new or existing one development challenges are always there. So I would prefer working on both.

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Ben Halpern

I used to like starting things but I think I've swung hard in the other direction being years into something I once started.

I have a hard time sitting down and doing all the base work for brand new things.

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Ben Lovy

There are few things more satisfying than turning an old convoluted mess of code into something clean, organized, and maintainable.

...why my GitHub is packed full of quarter-baked messy unfinished ideas is beyond me.

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MurrayVarey

Absolutely -- refactoring is good for the soul.

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Waylon Walker

I really like seeing a project come together. I like the feeling of taking it to the next level. Starting new things all the time seems like you never get anything too far along.

My /temp directory disagrees. There are 100s of quick projects left here to be forgotten forever. Really though I like to start simple new projects to shake out new ideas that I intend to implement on existing projects. Sometimes I come up with good ideas. Many times I am glad that I tried it in a toy project, learn from it, and move on.

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Corey McCarty

I love the planning and design so green field is exciting (not that it often happens), BUT working in legacy code is more satisfying when you can bend old spaghetti to your will.

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Patryk • Edited

Preferably new, but I don't mind existing as long as it's not spaghetti code with a best before date of ~2009...

Nice maintainable code base, with proper documentation and tests? Don't mind working on that one bit.

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Imam Ali Mustofa

Both! Coz, I like reading code is written by another developer, so I can learn their logic and their structure "how", "why", "what", "who", and "where" they go first and make the plot and twist in the app they have work with.

In the new project, on my own; it's nice to go and make something good and make the client happy with their hope and goals.

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Roelof Jan Elsinga

Both! Brown field because I love shaping projects to serve a (new) purpose. Green field for the same reason, but also exploration of new techniques and being able to change a lot of stuff in a short period of time. The endurance I get from brown field is important for me as well as the new and shiny stuff.

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Jeremy Jackson

While I like both, I do prefer existing projects.

Starting a new project presents it's own challenges and gives me the chance to be a bit more creative with my problem solving and can put me into a situation where I have to learn a new way to accomplish something.

Existing projects still allow me to create, but I'm a bit more confined to the way that things are already being done (unless it's my own project then I can just rework it how I want).

If it's an existing project on a team, there are plenty of learning an teaching opportunities since there are different (and more efficient) ways to accomplish something via code. You get to grow and help others grow.

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hazhayder

If you are a newbie and want to learn new stuff then go for existing ones because you will have to improve your analytical skills and you have to improve debugging skills ones that is done you will feel more satisfied.

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Smit Patel

I prefer starting new projects and abandoning them to start a new one 😉

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Paweł Kowalski

Making new things becomes easy after X times. Maintenance is much more challenging and verifies all decisions made, which is necessary to grow as serious developer.