I have a folder on my desktop labeled "Projects." Inside are forty-three subdirectories. Each one represents an idea I started building, got 60% of the way through, and abandoned.
A CLI tool for managing Docker containers more intuitively. A library for handling retries with exponential backoff. A VS Code extension for visualizing git branch complexity. A personal wiki system built on graph databases. A automated testing framework for API contracts.
Some of them are genuinely good ideas. A few might have saved other developers weeks of work. At least two probably already exist as popular open-source projects that I never discovered because I was too busy building in isolation.
Every single one of them is completely useless sitting on my hard drive.
For years, I believed the right time to share something was when it was finished—polished, documented, production-ready, worthy of public scrutiny. That belief cost me opportunities to learn, connect, and build something that mattered.
Then I published a half-baked architecture diagram with a rough explanation on Twitter. Within three hours, I had feedback that would have taken me three months to discover on my own. Within a week, two people had forked the idea and built working prototypes. Within a month, the concept had evolved into something far better than I could have built alone.
That's when I learned: the cost of keeping ideas private far exceeds the embarrassment of sharing them incomplete.
The Perfectionism Trap
Most developers never publish anything because they're waiting for it to be "ready." The code needs more tests. The documentation needs to be comprehensive. The API needs to be stable. The performance needs to be optimized. The edge cases need to be handled.
This perfectionism feels like professionalism. It's actually fear dressed up as quality standards.
The truth is that "ready" is a moving target that recedes faster than you can chase it. By the time your side project is polished enough to meet your standards, the problem it solves has probably been solved by someone else—or more likely, you've lost interest entirely because you spent six months perfecting something nobody's using.
Meanwhile, the value of your half-finished idea—the core insight, the novel approach, the architectural decision that makes it interesting—is trapped in private where it can't help anyone, including you.
The developers who make disproportionate impact aren't the ones with the most polished projects. They're the ones willing to share rough ideas publicly and iterate based on feedback.
What Half-Finished Actually Means
Publishing half-finished doesn't mean dumping broken code on GitHub with no explanation. It means sharing the interesting part before you've built everything around it.
Share the architecture before the implementation. You've designed an interesting approach to handling state synchronization across distributed systems? Write it up. Draw the diagrams. Explain the tradeoffs. You don't need working code to share valuable thinking.
Share the problem before the solution. You've identified an annoying gap in existing tools but haven't built a replacement yet? Document the problem thoroughly. Describe what you wish existed. Someone might already have built it, or your write-up might inspire someone else to build it.
Share the experiment before the conclusion. You're trying a new approach to testing microservices but don't know if it'll work? Write about what you're trying and why. The feedback you get will help you succeed faster or fail faster—both better than grinding alone for months.
Share the learning before the expertise. You just figured out something confusing about Kubernetes networking? Write it down while it's fresh, before you've internalized it so deeply that you forget what was confusing. Your "I just learned this" perspective is more valuable than expert hindsight.
The value isn't in completeness. The value is in the insight that makes your idea interesting. Share that insight early, before you've buried it under layers of implementation details.
What Happens When You Publish Early
The benefits of publishing half-finished ideas are asymmetric. The downside is mild embarrassment. The upside is transformational.
You discover what actually matters. When you share an idea publicly, people immediately tell you which parts are interesting and which parts are solving non-problems. This feedback redirects your effort toward what creates value before you've wasted months perfecting the wrong thing.
You find collaborators. The people who care about the same problem you're solving will reach out. Some will contribute code. Others will contribute ideas. A few might become long-term collaborators. None of this happens if your idea stays private.
You build a reputation for creative thinking. Publishing half-finished ideas establishes you as someone who explores the problem space actively. This reputation is more valuable than a portfolio of polished but unremarkable projects.
You create intellectual collisions. Someone working on a seemingly unrelated problem sees your write-up and realizes your approach solves their problem. Or they combine your insight with their insight to create something neither of you would have built alone. These collisions only happen when ideas are public.
You escape perfectionism paralysis. Once something is published—even in rough form—the pressure to perfect it before sharing is gone. Now you can iterate based on real feedback instead of imagined criticism.
The Writing That Matters
Publishing half-finished ideas doesn't require polished blog posts. It requires clear communication about the interesting part.
The concept document. A Markdown file explaining the problem, your proposed approach, and the open questions. Maybe 500 words. Published as a GitHub repository with just a README. This takes an hour to write and might save a dozen developers weeks of work.
The architecture diagram. A visual representation of how components interact, with annotations explaining the key decisions. Create it with the Charts and Diagrams Generator, then share it on Twitter, dev.to, or your blog with a paragraph of context.
The rough prototype video. A three-minute screen recording showing your idea working in the simplest possible case, with voiceover explaining what you're trying to achieve. Post it on YouTube or Twitter. The production quality doesn't matter—the idea does.
The learning-in-public thread. A Twitter or LinkedIn thread documenting what you're building, why it's interesting, and what you're struggling with. Real-time sharing of the messy middle. Use the Social Media Post Generator to draft it, then add your authentic voice.
The exploratory blog post. A write-up of your thinking process—the problem as you understand it, the approaches you've considered, and the one you're pursuing. Write it in your normal voice, don't worry about perfection. The Rewrite Text tool can help polish clarity without losing authenticity.
The format doesn't matter. What matters is making the core idea accessible to other developers who might care.
The Technical Publishing Stack
Modern tools make publishing half-finished ideas embarrassingly easy. There's no excuse anymore.
For code and documentation: GitHub repositories with clear README files. You don't need a working build system or comprehensive tests. A well-written explanation of the idea with rough code is enough.
For writing: dev.to, Medium, personal blogs, Twitter threads, LinkedIn posts. Pick whichever platform you already use. Don't optimize for reach—optimize for getting the idea out of your head and into public where it can compound.
For visual explanations: Excalidraw, draw.io, or AI-assisted diagram generation. The Business Report Generator can help structure complex technical explanations into readable formats.
For collaboration: GitHub Discussions, Discord communities, Slack channels, Reddit threads. Post your half-finished idea in relevant communities and invite feedback. The conversation is often more valuable than the initial post.
For refinement: Use Crompt AI to iterate on explanations quickly. Test different ways of presenting the idea across multiple models to see which framing resonates. The Plagiarism Detector ensures your writing is original even when influenced by others' work.
The technical infrastructure for publishing ideas has never been easier. The only barrier is psychological.
The Reputation Economy
Building in public creates a fundamentally different career trajectory than building in private.
Private builders are evaluated on completed projects. Their GitHub shows finished work. Their resume lists shipped features. They're hired based on what they've proven they can deliver.
Public builders are evaluated on thinking quality. Their public artifacts show how they approach problems, how they communicate complexity, and how they iterate based on feedback. They're hired—or become founders, or start consulting—based on demonstrated judgment and communication, not just technical output.
The second path has a significantly higher ceiling because the opportunities that come from public visibility are nonlinear. A single insightful post about an interesting technical problem can lead to job offers, speaking invitations, consulting contracts, or co-founder connections.
None of this happens if your best thinking stays in private repositories.
The Fear That Stops Everyone
The reason most developers don't publish half-finished ideas isn't lack of time or tools. It's fear of three specific criticisms:
"This already exists." Yes, probably. But your explanation might be clearer than existing documentation. Your approach might have subtle differences. Your write-up might reach people the existing solution didn't. Duplication of ideas is how good ideas spread.
"This won't work because of [technical limitation]." Maybe you're right. Maybe they're right. Either way, discovering this through public feedback is faster than discovering it yourself three months from now. The criticism is valuable data, not personal attack.
"This is obvious/trivial." To experts, everything is obvious in hindsight. To the developer six months behind you in their learning journey, it's not obvious at all. You're not writing for experts—you're writing for your past self and people like them.
All three criticisms might happen. None of them matter as much as you think. The upside of publishing far exceeds the downside of criticism.
The Practice of Public Building
Treating publishing as a practice rather than an event changes the relationship with sharing work.
Set a publishing cadence. Once a week, publish something—a concept, a learning, a question, a rough prototype demo. The consistency matters more than the polish. Volume creates opportunities that perfectionism prevents.
Start conversations, don't present conclusions. Frame your posts as "here's what I'm exploring" rather than "here's the answer." Inviting feedback makes criticism feel collaborative rather than adversarial.
Document while building, not after. Write the explanation as you figure things out, when the confusion and insights are fresh. This produces better documentation than trying to reconstruct your thinking six months later.
Share the messy middle, not just the polished end. The most valuable posts are the ones that show the thinking process, the dead ends, the uncertainties. This is what people actually need to see to learn.
The Compounding Effect
Publishing half-finished ideas creates compounding returns that aren't obvious initially.
Each post is an asset that works for you indefinitely. That architecture diagram you shared two years ago still surfaces in Google searches. That rough prototype video still gets referenced in conversations. The value doesn't expire.
Your public work becomes your referral network. People discover your thinking through old posts and reach out about new opportunities. The person who read your half-finished exploration of distributed caching becomes the hiring manager who remembers your name six months later.
Your writing clarifies your own thinking. The process of explaining an idea publicly forces you to understand it more deeply. You catch gaps in your reasoning. You discover edge cases. You articulate tradeoffs you were considering only vaguely.
You build a track record of intellectual courage. Being willing to share incomplete thinking publicly signals confidence, curiosity, and collaborative instinct—all traits that create career opportunities.
The Permission You Need
You don't need permission to publish half-finished ideas. You don't need a certain follower count, or a prestigious job title, or proof that your idea is original.
You just need:
- An idea you find interesting
- A way to explain it clearly
- The willingness to put it in public
That's it. The rest is optional.
The developers who wait for perfect conditions never publish anything. The developers who publish rough ideas regularly build careers that wouldn't exist otherwise.
The Simple Truth
Every developer has ideas worth sharing. The difference between developers with growing reputations and developers working in obscurity isn't idea quality—it's publishing frequency.
The best idea trapped in your head is worth less than the half-finished idea someone else can build on, critique, or be inspired by.
Your forty-three abandoned projects might contain insights that save other developers weeks of work. Your half-written explanations might be exactly what someone needs to understand a complex concept. Your rough prototypes might inspire someone else to build the production version.
But none of this happens if you keep waiting for "ready."
Publish the architecture before the implementation. Share the exploration before the conclusion. Write the explanation before you've become an expert. Post the rough demo before it's polished.
The cost of keeping ideas private is invisibly high. The benefit of publishing them early is asymmetrically valuable.
Start now. Pick one half-finished idea. Write 500 words explaining why it's interesting. Publish it. See what happens.
The worst case is nothing. The best case changes your career.
-Leena:)
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