I don't think most people refer as a "weekend project" to brag about performance and how much they did with little time, for me it's a general term that refers to something you do on your "free" time or time outside your normal work schedule.

Yep exactly! Something thats perhaps a little different to your 9-5 grind.

You either believe what people say or you don't. There are plenty of comments on HN along the lines of "when I was at google..." or "our site does 500 req/sec". Not sure why weekend project claims would, somehow, be less trustworthy.

The reason I say it's a weekend project is to let people know that a relatively small amount of time was spent on it..so it might not have the polish of a more exhaustive system.

I've always seen it as a way to key people in to the fact that this is something one did just to try it out, and not something one is emotionally invested in. Communicating that may, in theory, get people to be more honest/brutal in their opinions rather than trying to "be nice" about it.

It doesn't necessarily mean "look, I did it in a weekend!" but "hey, I was messing around with this in my spare time..."

It is a way to convey that the project is somewhat unfinished. Because it is mostly a personal project, the project may not be entirely accessible, it might not be the most scalable, it might not be locale sensitive or otherwise reminds the projects user's that it's not a finished production product.

My understanding of weekend project is not that it was developped in one weekend, but that it has been developped in evenings/weekends by someone who has a day job.

So it's not really saying it was developped in less than 48 hours, just that it's not their full-time gig.

I guess it does not necessarily means 1 weekend project. A week-end project could be the one I have been working on for past 3 weekends :).

Week days are usually busy with normal work, so weekend is for leisure development anyway :)

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story"

Honestly, it doesn't really matter if people lie about how long they took, it'll just make the rest of us rage, and try do better - which in my books, is good for programmers.

This adjective clarifies nothing. We don't know how many weekends it was or if you're telling the truth. Besides it's irrelevant what days of the week you pushed the keys. Call it "a project" or MVP, IMHO.

when i post weekend projects it usually is 1.5-2 weeks. It's not supposed to mean something for the time it took to develop, it's more of a generic term to describe something that is not finished. It's a warning to readers that they shouldn't be too harsh on details and also that it's not meant to be a business (but if it does i would be all too happy).

I would gladly use another term if there was one

WIP (Work In Progress) is usually used for design work, I think. That seems suitable.