As a developer, how many times have you been asked:
"How long would it take to make ?".
I can't count the amount of times I relearned the lesson that these types of projects always take longer than expected to fully launch.
This recently happened to me when a friend brought up the idea of a "Fantasy Football Draft Order Generator", any my response was naively:
"A few hours or so".
(You can checkout the final product here. While it's very simple, I can promise it was more than a few hours.)
I usually get started creating these projects using a tool like create-next-app.
I'll add Typescript, Tailwind, a component library, wire up my site's layout, fiddle with flex-box in the footer, Figure out how external scripts should be loaded in Next JS , etc etc etc.
Many of these individual tasks are fairly trivial on their own, but it's often a death by 1000 cuts, where your "1 hour project" quickly turns into a whole ordeal. Before you know it, this trivial project starts eating into your evenings/weekends (or maybe you never get around to properly launching the project).
Do "future you" a favour...and create your own "Indie Boilerplate".
I've created mine here:
https://github.com/jamespohalloran/indie-boilerplate
On my next hobby project I'll be able to get started with:
npx create-next-app@latest -e https://github.com/jamespohalloran/indie-boilerplate
I won't need to worry about dealing with:
- the site's layout (Let's face it, these usually aren't that unique)
- Configuring SEO meta fields
- Setting up Tailwind & my preferred component library (DaisyUI in my case)
- Adding my personal links to the footer
- Adding copyright info
I also even have my own "Indie Project Checklist" in the readme to keep me on track.
I hope this helps out "future you" on your next hobby project!
To follow along with more of my hobby projects, follow me on twitter & checkout my portfolio site
Top comments (0)