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7 projects, 12 months

JkImExploring on December 12, 2019

So originally I was planning to do a 12 projects, 12 months year-long project. I only had two ideas and one is a bigger one. Someone gave me the id...
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Ben Lovy • Edited

This is a great idea - I definitely continually fall into the same rut. Spelling it all out for yourself ahead of time is a good way to set a roadmap! I also think 7 is a more realistic number than 12, setting realistic goals is important for setting yourself up for success. By December 12, 2020, I'm hoping to have completed the following seven:

  1. Finish my music synthesizer/generator project, with rudimentary music authoring and a playable keyboard.
  2. Build a graphical game of Yahtzee using Rust/WASM with networked play and an AI opponent.
  3. Complete porting my portfolio to Gatsby.js instead of homebrew DIY mish-mash, and re-host all DEV blog posts there.
  4. Build a more robust attendance system over my first attempt that isn't so tightly coupled to one particular school.
  5. Add a new feature to the DEV codebase - right now I have my eyes on a way to embed MIDI files in posts using liquid tags.
  6. Add features to my home-grown Lisp interpreter so I can dogfood Advent of Code 2020 in a language I built myself.
  7. I dunno, maybe get a tech job :)

A bunch of this is stuff I've already messed around with and have repositories for - starting projects is fun, but 2020 is going to be about the follow-through.

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JkImExploring

I've seen some playable keyboards and they're so cool!
My portfolio site right now has the blog part just linked to DEV but I might switch it at some point.... or redo the whole site. I'm not as happy with it now as I was when I first made it.
Those all seem like great goals! I like how so many are multi-part.
I hope to get a tech job within the next year but I'd also be good with doing SEO and/or social media with a different company because I do enjoy it.

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Ben Lovy

I'm not as happy with it now as I was when I first made it.

Every time I feel stuck for what to build, I just look through my super old GitHub graveyard, and then I get overwhelmed at how much work I really do already have in front of me...

On the one hand it's cool to see the skill progression in yourself, but on the other what the heck was Past Ben thinking?!

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JkImExploring

I have two graveyard projects right now. One was redoing a final project because it was a mess and the other is a connect four board but I have no desire to do either anymore so I set new goals. Hopefully I finish these? Those were also ones other people told me to do so I think just wanting to do them for myself will encourage me more.

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Ben Lovy

I don't think there's any real harm in moving on from a project that hasn't captured your interest as long as you're dropping it in favor of something you actually will build and learn from.

A connect-four board sounds pretty fun, though, maybe something to revisit in a new style down the road? I like having small projects I feel I fully understand, they're good for learning new tools and paradigms so you don't also need to learn a whole new problem. It's way easier to learn one thing at a time.

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JkImExploring

I'm keeping it on my GitHub so if I decide to do it down to road I won't be starting from scratch. It was a starter project for Chingu but it ended up lining up with a vacation I planned and I didn't have time to finish before I left.

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Blake Stansell

This is a great post! I'm trying to get a list together as well, although as a beginner mine will probably be more like 4 projects in 12 months :)

My biggest goal is to get my personal website finished and pulling in blog posts from a headless cms.

Have you considered a PWA for your app? I've been going through some tutorials on them, and, unless you know or want to learn Kotlin, they seem like a great way to build an app without getting lost in the weeds.

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JkImExploring

4 is better than nothing! I only did one this year I think... whoops but it was my portfolio site.
I haven't looked into PWAs yet! I will though!

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Ali Sherief

Those are very exciting things to do. I want to make a GUI toolkit that can replace GLUT, but OpenGL shaders have been a thorny topic for me. The single biggest problem I'm facing is that I can't debug shaders (renderdoc comes close, but no OpenGL shader debugging support, alas). I've taken a hiatus from OpenGL entirely because of that.

I remember when I made my first OpenGL program: A bunch of models on a grey screen with camera controls on the keyboard. Then I learned how to shine a diffuse color on the screen (yay completely pitch dark models!). Now I'm trying to implement reusable BRDF models so I can put them into other OpenGL programs, but how do you do that if you can't even debug it.

Think about all the JS programs we wouldn't have been able to build if there was no JS debugger!

I'm also fond of 3D modelling with Blender but the whole OpenGL episode left a sore on me.

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JkImExploring

That just sounds so frustrating! I've never done 3D modeling but I kind of want to try. I also want to learn SVG next year but that I don't know what to create yet, I might just create something cool for my portfolio homepage.

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Richard Schloss

One more hashtag to use...the 4th one might be: #youCanDoIt

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Abhay Goswami

To-do list for 2020:

-Bhahi-khata( application for managing your expenses)
-Get AWS solutions architect certificate

  • Master React, MongoDB and Node.js
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JkImExploring

Those are great goals! Good luck!!