In 2018, my goal was simple: every two weeks, release something. The theme was release more. Early on, I decided a “release” can be a project, a useful (or fun) repo, or even a blog post. And here’s my 2018 retrospective.
Completed Projects
| frogtop.us | Frogtopus is a tiny webapp that lets you share stuff between your devices. It’s like a personal, private, distributed pastebin. |
| azproblem.info | This website introduces the AZ Problem: a generalization of the XY Problem. |
| snp500 | JSON endpoint that returns an up-to-date list of S&P500 constituents scraped from Wikipedia. |
| spoiled.tv | This website breaks down your favorite TV shows and movies ? I also pitched this website to a few investors. |
| Jumpino 2.0 | Chatrooms that die. |
| TechFair LA Hackathon | Placed 2nd at the 2018 TechFair LA Hackathon (and won $2000) by building an MVP of a bias-free employee feedback app. |
Incomplete Projects
| sub.dog | Subscription management. The repo is private, but I worked on this with my cousin when I was on the East Coast. Maybe we’ll finish it some time this year. |
| kd.gg | Esports tournament idea, the repo is also private. Worked on this with a friend of mine for a few months before I had to abandon it because I needed to spend time interviewing as I was looking for a new job. |
| Archmaster | Card game prototype that allows you to create your own cards. Inspired by MTG/Hearthstone. Still very much in the design phase. |
Blog Posts
- Scalia: Dead Wrong on Capital Punishment
- Writing Prompt: The Living Apocalypse!
- I Used Azure so You Don’t Have To
- Gödel’s First Incompleteness Theorem for Programmers
- Gödel’s Second Incompleteness Theorem for Programmers
- How Spread Syntax Breaks Javascript
- The Case for Artisanal Programming
Conclusions and 2019
Overall, not bad. Even though my goal was one release every 2 weeks, I worked on about 16 things (and I’m probably forgetting a couple), and released a total of 13. This was a bit of a hectic year because I was focusing solely on spoiled.tv for the first few months (pitching, etc.) and then I had to focus on finding a full-time job. The projects also vary wildly in level of effort and consistency. So where to next?
In 2019, I want to focus on lessening the scope of side-projects. Most of the unfinished projects remained unfinished because of scope creep. It’s a tough decision, but releasing a neutered product is better than never releasing anything at all. I also have about 5 or so drafts of almost-finished blog posts — while it’s true that “the good is the enemy of the best,” sometimes, good is good enough.