TL;DR
Thanks to Miguel Piedrafita, you can listen to the audio version!
I've been coding 25 years, but just now realizing I have nothing to show for it. I need to get past my fears and perfectionism ideology and just put myself out there. Move past the fear of being judged. To be part of the community and share my opinions.
The Story
So I just turned 36 on January 13, 2019. That means I've been officially coding for 25 years now.
But with all that time, I've realized that all of my hard work and effort, I have nothing to show for it that is mine alone, far as my portfolio goes.
I only have websites for clients, which most are no longer up; or businesses I have worked for as an employee.
I did a lot of soul searching around this, as to why I had nothing to show for it and what was the cause of this.
It started when my buddy who had reached out to me to learn to code, calls me up one night and says "hey, checkout my website! I set it up!".
He had purchased a domain name, a Wordpress template and some cheap hosting. He set it up and filled out the content. It was live.
It looked well done. My preference would no longer be Wordpress as I prefer to build full apps using PHP or Node. But he didn't know how to code so Wordpress was a best solution for him.
I felt myself getting jealous that he had put together a great looking site within a week, after I had taught him the basics.
It wasn't jealousy of his skill set, because I know he didn't do much more than just the basics that anyone could learn in a day or two.
But it was the fact that he started the project and completed 90% of it with in a week.
He had a tangible product in such a short time.
How did he do this?! How did he overcome the fear of releasing the website with it not being in a perfect state? How did he find the motivation to create the content for the site. How did he stay focussed and not allow over design, to run him in to a rabbit hole?
I had to be honest with myself. I started to realize that I live in doubt of my skillset, and fear of peoples judgement. I am somewhat of a perfectionist when it come to my projects so I will start them, spending an insane amount of time thinking of all the way to make it the best app I can just to end up never finishing.
The only time I've complete projects fully, is when it's involved having a boss and being paid for my work. My personal project would get anywhere from 50% to 90% done before I get bored or I would forget about them.
Deep down, I know I do great work! I literally study every single day, and I work on huge projects at work. I've been in the field for over 15 years. I work with and even challenge some of the best developers.
I've worked on software/apps that pull in millions and millions of dollars and have hundreds of thousands of users. So when it comes to work, I'm solid and secure.
So why do I struggle with my personal work? It's almost like split personality.
I realized that I just have to go back to the days of when I was starting. "K.I.S.S". Keep it simple, stupid!
I also started paying more attention to the social side of development. I joined a few more groups. One of them is a beginners group, to allow me to get back to thinking like a new coder.
I noticed that there were some coders who only had a few months under their belt, offering advice and even full on courses. I was shocked by how many people were not only interested but thanking that person. The new coders were building a following.
To me this was so shocking. How were they able to do this, and how was it that people could care about their opinion when they hardly even know what they are doing?
I guess I didn't realize just how many people out there are seeking anyone who knows even a little more than they do. They don't care if that person has 25 years or 25 minutes more education than they do. They only care if they can learn from this person and build a communication line with them.
I quickly realized even on here, I've only posted a few articles and I already have a good amount of followers. The only thing holding me back is myself.
I wanted to force myself to change this year. I decided to take some baby steps to get there.
First off, I came to the conclusion that I was to stressed out to complete any of my own personal project due to taking on side projects. I've always worked full time and for a majority of my life, have had some sort of side client to make extra money.
I decided that if I'm not making enough money to take me to the next bracket of lifestyle, that it just wasn't worth my time.
I kept it simple in thinking for this. If I don't make at least 50% income of my full time job, doing side work then I shouldn't be doing it.
So I quit my clients. The release of stress was amazing. No more people to answer too. Just a normal job, my family and my side projects!
The second thing I did, was forced myself to build a quick project and release it no matter how poorly I felt it might be.
I did that too! You can check it out at [https://Gidgitz.com].
The next goal was to keep adding features to this site. Learn the frameworks, packages and setup that I can master quickly and will be happy with using for future projects.
I started out really strong with this... But then I ended up stuck on a refactor tangent for 3 months. 3 months passed while each day I coded on the new api backend with excitement.
3 months before I realized I was doing what I always do. I have to overcomplicate everything and it has to be perfect. I didn't want to release what I had because I had to finish x, y, z.
So tonight, when I realized I had done it again, got myself stuck back in the same nasty pattern, I forced myself to take what I currently had and break out the unfinished excess. I then released what changes I could, tonight.
So I did! I feel great about it. It's not a lot, but it's up and it's running. It may not be exactly how I want it, and it has a million improvements that could be made. But I did it, to prove that it's better to just push it out to the public than to have it sit on my laptop where no one will have a chance to see it.
I have to work hard to avoid my old habits. To face my fear of judgment. To realize even if no one sees it, at least the project is there to be seen. It's not about making it perfect but about making it available and then getting feed back and making improvements.
My next step is to finish my backend api setup and release small updates every few weeks. Once I'm happy with my setup, it's time to create my next idea.
On top of that I plan on putting myself out there. Taking the risk and showing people my ideas. Taking old projects and making them available for others to see.
I'll be posting them up here in the next few weeks.
It's a learning process. 25 years of coding and I'm basically just starting now.
wish me luck! If you read all this, you deserve a pat on the back!
Update
So I wrote up an article in response to the amazing feedback I've received from this post. It also has some helpful steps to take, if you yourself want to move forward! Why you should face your fears and doubts, as a developer.
Varymade LLC.
Current projects are https://charactergenerator4000.com and https://coder.exchange. Please check them out and let us know your thoughts.
-- DeChamp
Oldest comments (181)
I have to admit, I never agreed on a post so much... Everything you face I face it also. I see myself starting so much projects and never finish those. I concluded that when you are not motivated by earning money or being constrained in a project make a personal business fail. Very true.
I am grateful to hear you can relate. Perhaps it's also deadline driven, an outside force that is required to motivate us as well.
I have the exact same problem, everything needs to be perfect.. What I find working is building smaller applications or splitting API's in different so "repositories". 👍
I agree. I do this. But I still manage to forget to keep it small. I like to fix as I go. So I ended up adding more and more to each change. I just have been forcing myself to keep my commits small and pushing more often.
Great piece, thanks for sharing this (which I think requires some courage).
Very recognizable because I "suffer" from the same "syndrome", the tendency of overcomplicating and perfecting too much ... maybe some people are more the "maker" type, or more ambitious to put their stuff out in the spotlight or something, for sure it's a mindset thing.
Thanks for sharing and good to see that you were able to overcome this psychological hurdle, anyway the fact that you started coding at 11 shows that you've got plenty of passion, so maybe the problem isn't that much of a real problem, it's all in the mind. :-)
By the way your site (gidgitz.com) looks great, love the design!
Thank you for noticing the courage it took. I almost didn't post this and then I realized I was doing the exact same thing as I'm talking about. ha ha.
You're right in saying that it is a mindset.
Thank you again, and I really appreciate your compliment on gidgitz.com!
For me, perfectionism is insecurity in disguise.
I'm right now learning too that perfectionism is just holding me back!
Stuff, in the beginning, should be not perfect and it should be not perfect. When it is then your goals are to low.
Here is what I do about the project starting and stopping thing:
1) I say to my self it's okay! It's okay to stop this project! It's okay to not work on this anymore.
2) For new projects, I set a deadline! Like: In 2 weeks I will have an MVP ready if now I will not work on that project anymore.
3) Repeat number 1).
I agree! definitely insecurity in disguise. Thanks for the tips!
I absolutely feel this. I quit my job 2 years ago to become a web developer because I had a couple of personal projects I wanted to build. Truthfully, I was probably a competent enough developer to build out an acceptable version within 10 months of becoming a dev, but two things always stopped me:
Shiny object syndrome. I wanted to make the project with the best platform possible, so I switched from WordPress, to Laravel, to Django and then started reading up on serverless. It was a great learning experience, but I got nothing done.
I wanted more features than I could reasonably turn out by myself.
I got stuck for a year without launching anything.
I think what helped me was a combination of reading a bunch of articles about Minimum Viable Products (also known as MVPs) and just getting fed up with not having anything done. I lowered my ambition from ~10 features to 1 feature and built a workable site in WordPress in 14 days. It doesn't matter that it's in WordPress because no one is visiting the site yet anyway so scalability is a total non-issue 🤷♂️
I've spent the past two weeks trying to figure out how to promote something that I think is really cool, and even though the codebase is kind of messy, I'm really happy with it and no one cares about the code.
Best of luck as you jump into your projects, if you focus on getting code out the door you'll do great!
You nailed it with the shiny object syndrome. I have been there so many times. Along with the fact that at work, we tend to plan out way in to the future, with many many developer working on the same code base. So by habit I end up bringing that to my personal projects. So my projects become so bogged down with proper process and design, that I end up losing myself in it.
So you're right, it's about determining the MVP and moving to that goal.
Share your project with me, I'd love to see it!
I've been a freelancer the entire time I've been a developer, which has meant on most projects I don't have to worry about implementing a lot of process. It's been a blessing and a curse: I definitely can work faster but I've found on bigger projects I end up needing to do big refactors after a while because I didn't have as much process in place.
I'd love to show you my project! The site is SacMusic.com, and it's a directory of the open mics and jams in the Sacramento California region. It's the site I wish I had when I started playing open mics a decade ago.
Dude this site looks great! Well done. I viewed it on the iPhone and it works nicely. Great work.
The same happens to me 🙋♂️
It's a hard thing to fight! This year I'm trying to get into more of a production-oriented mindset where I spend less time fighting with technical details and more time building, even if I'm doing it in a less than ideal way.
I have almost same story; quit job 2 years ago and all other shiny object stuff. So we are not alone :)
I absolutely feel you!
Also been coding since 2000, and all my code and products are basically hidden behind corporate firewalls. URGHHH!!!
So I've starting building out my new personal site, added a recent project with some details on how it was done, also started writing some blog posts, although I haven't posted them yet.
I have also been shocked, or rather horrified by so much of the articles about coding I've seen lately, not here on Dev, but on other sites.
Following along with those articles and realising that this person obviously started building things 10 minutes ago and is basically telling the whole world how to do things. I've seen serious security flaws that would get you fired from your job straight away!
So maybe we can help motivate each other and remind ourselves to just ...
Keep It Simple Stupid!!!!
Thank you. Well I encourage you to post those! Even if they are not perfect. I almost didn't post this one because I was worried it wasn't done well enough or I would be dismissed, but look at how great the response has been!
I'd love to read your post!
I've actually learned new things from new developers so I do love following new blood, but you're not wrong in saying that some of the newbies can mis-post. I think it's been an missed opportunity for me to step in and let them know the risk or offer the correct solution. Perhaps you and I could both make that a new effort, to help them learn.
Wonderful article I find that getting your content and stuff out there matters more than being perfect as you can spend months building stuff that no one might need.
Good luck and I look forward to your side project and future articles :)
Thank you so much Max, I appreciate that. You're right, it just takes little steps to get yourself out there.
Don't worry I'm in the same boat as you I had a side project that is gathering dust for a while and I beat myself up for it as well so I totally could relate about it. I have lot's to learn from you as well :)
Totally agree with this, will take it as an advice and try to apply it to my own life.
btw, created an audio version of this article for easier consumtion.
Thank you! I'm so grateful for you doing that. It was really cool to hear my words being spoken! I'm adding this as a link to the article and giving you credit. Thanks again!
I loved this article, here I am always thinking "I started to learn to code so I could build my own projects. But now 3 years in and nothing to show for it".
It's nice to know that a lot of other people also have this problem!
Once my side projects have wrapped. I am taking the conscious decision to say no to all new side project client work (even if it's a side project I have a stake in). The reason for this is because if it's my own side project. I only have myself to answer to. And means I can focus a lot more on my current job and my work life balance.
that is great to hear that I can help motivate you to get where you want to be, far as back to your personal projects. It's not easy giving up potential monies. But I'm finding in this, that my passion and excitement is worth way more than the clients money I've earned. I wish you luck and can't wait to see your projects!
Excellent words ! Thanks for sharing !
Thank you!
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