Hi Denis, congratulations on completing that mega workshop! That sounds like a busy month of work ;-).
Here are my thoughts on your questions.
Do (or did you) you work on personal projects? Why?: Yes, continuously for my entire career. Personal projects give me a chance to experiment, learn, break things. Ideally, you can do all that at work, but that depends heavily on the company culture. Later in my career, they also started to help me educate others by writing about my experiences.
Are they small or medium/large?: From small to large. Some turned into startups, some projects ended without anyone ever seeing them.
How many years of experience in development do you have?: Twenty
Do you tend to start and abandon these projects? Why?: Earlier in my career, I had many projects I started and abandoned. I lacked the confidence to publish my work. As I got older, I realized no matter the status of a project, others may benefit so I started to build in public and work on projects for longer before abandoning them.
Have you completed at least one personal project? Was it successful?: Yes, I've had a few projects that were successful over the years. The most recent one is your-analytics.org that is not officially launched, but has good usage.
What's your process? Do you start with coding or any investigation?: Always investigation first! What painpoints exist? What annoys me in my daily workflow? Can I improve that? Does it impact other people? Are there solutions already? If so, can I add value to creating a new project?
I hope that helps and good luck with your talk, let me know if I can provide more details on any of the above.
Hi Denis, congratulations on completing that mega workshop! That sounds like a busy month of work ;-).
Here are my thoughts on your questions.
I hope that helps and good luck with your talk, let me know if I can provide more details on any of the above.
Thanks a lot, Mike! That's really insightful information. Glad to see such a proactive person!