If it's a money-making project, this is actually a good thing--competition means there's a market, people are willing to buy what you're making. You'll have to stand out in some way, of course, but it's much better to compete for your share of a lively market than to be building the world's best app nobody wants.
If it's a learning project, it doesn't much matter what already exists. There are thousands of to-do apps out there, but I built one anyway and learned a ton in the process.
If it's an open-source, "giving back" project, there's an argument to be made for abandoning your own project and helping out with the existing one. But there are also several examples of people building their own thing--a module bundler, a framework, a functional toolkit--that ended up having a major influence on the future of existing projects, or even overtook them to become the default solution.
Don't give up just because it's been done before. Unoriginality is one of the foundations of creativity.
If it's a money-making project, this is actually a good thing--competition means there's a market, people are willing to buy what you're making. You'll have to stand out in some way, of course, but it's much better to compete for your share of a lively market than to be building the world's best app nobody wants.
If it's a learning project, it doesn't much matter what already exists. There are thousands of to-do apps out there, but I built one anyway and learned a ton in the process.
If it's an open-source, "giving back" project, there's an argument to be made for abandoning your own project and helping out with the existing one. But there are also several examples of people building their own thing--a module bundler, a framework, a functional toolkit--that ended up having a major influence on the future of existing projects, or even overtook them to become the default solution.
Don't give up just because it's been done before. Unoriginality is one of the foundations of creativity.
I've often said...
"Unoriginality is one of the foundations of creativity." 👈🔥 100%.