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How to build a side project that will impress future employers

elisabethgross on January 21, 2020

Hey everyone! Welcome to a special edition of Code Review, our weekly series of coding challenges and job related content. In this post, I’ll be ta...

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zakwillis • Jan 21 '20

Hi there. Good article.
I would add this though. I would say we shouldn't be doing this just to get employment. Obviously, we all need money.
I think it was "Uncle" Bob who said - developers are the most powerful people going, if they know they are powerful. The reason is, they can team together and build products.
It is important to try and monetise these products developers do as side projects. It is a completely different mindset - one I have only myself got over the last year.
One quick example. You are building a major piece of work, are there sub-components which could by themselves be a product.

elisabethgross • Jan 21 '20

Thanks! I totally agree. My favorite part of being an engineer is the ability I have to create with just a laptop in front of me. When you put a couple of us together, plus some good friends and mediocre ideas, the stars are the limit.

In terms of sub-components that could themselves be a product. Absolutely! Each company's scraper class is a bit of a subcomponent and one of our ideas was to really open source this and let other people add to the scraper library. Anyone interested in getting involved? Let me know!

zakwillis • Jan 21 '20

Hi Elisabeth, I have written my own scraping engine. On top of HTML Agility Pack and ScrapySharp.

inforhino.co.uk/innovation

Am not quite at the stage of selling this through my limited company as it underpins the processing framework for my property platform, but am thinking of launching other deployment/processing applications on this framework very soon.

elisabethgross • Jan 21 '20

Nice!! I'll be sure to check it out

dgigafox • Jan 22 '20 • Edited

Thanks for the great advice! I agree on using unfamiliar tools and frameworks because programming skills do not focus on language syntax alone but how you handle technical challenges. Although I have a problem finishing side projects. I think that is the downside of too many ideas in the backlog and that is why I tend to switch from one to another. Any tips for me? 🙂

Clive Da • Jan 21 '20

er does posting on DEVTO count as a sideproject ? its taking up all my sparetime :)

elisabethgross • Jan 21 '20

RELATABLE COMMENT hahahahha :)

Warner Onstine • Dec 1 '20 • Edited

Some additional tips I would add:

A specific goal in mind of why you want to build this thing
Once you have your goal, then I would time box it to 4 - 6 weeks. What is it that you think you can deliver in that time frame?
Once you've got your end goal and you have your specifics for a deliverable then you need to work on that project every single day. Not just on the weekends, not just when you think you have time, carve out at least 30 minutes a day and work on your project.
Document as you go. What are you learning? What is stumping you? Make sure you keep this up to date so that when you come back to your project the next day it is fresh in your mind and is easy to pick up again.
Run into a problem? Ask for help. Find the right forum or group and ask detailed questions about the issue you're facing. Most communities are very open and willing to help those who are learning.

Some of this I have distilled into a flowchart to help people pick a side project. Other sections are actually part of a course I teach called 30 Minute Project.