So I have been trying to force myself to start a new side project recently and it has got me thinking how important it really is to have side projects. I believe learning is important and to keep on top of technology but do you really need a bunch of side projects to do that?
I have had exactly one major side project to build a fantasy football draft board. I first built it in Symfony and Aurelia, but I was not pleased with the result so I rebuilt it with Adonis and Vue for backend and frontend respectively. I learned a lot in the process about building API driven single page apps.
On the other hand I also learn a ton by fiddling with things at work in between projects and by reading articles such as on DEV.
So I wanted to see what the good people of DEV think about side projects and how necessary they are. I for one think that they are nice to have, but not at the expense of your happiness and well being.
Top comments (2)
If you're doing it for fun, great. But if you just want to learn new tech for career purposes, best place to do it is on the job: you have more resources, you have direct requirements, it's more realistic, and it's not eating in to your free time.
Longer version: codewithoutrules.com/2017/09/09/le...
Same as you, I believe side projects help in learning and in staying on top.
However, I feel that starting something from the scratch does not help as it takes up a lot of time and energy. Rather yo should focus on what you already have and find a way to reach it to the relevant audience.
We did something similar with remote.tools. You can read more about our journey here - hackernoon.com/how-side-projects-c...
Let me know if you found it helpful.