I've been doing a similar thing where I build lots of different SAAS type projects, lots of them will go nowhere, but what I have learned about design, abstraction, and trade-offs is enormous. Definitely worth the time to do something like this. One of my first priorities in hiring someone is to see if they have side projects where they learn things unconstrained by the normal grind of daily professional life.

Well it’s inevitable that the culture of a community is going to drift as it grows. We even have a name for the effect in the hacker community: Eternal September.

I also think the negativity may be reflective of the mood of society overall. This has been a very tough year for so many people. When people are having a tough time I think they can latch on to one of their pet peeves and use it to blow off some steam. We just need to be careful as a community that we don’t allow the discussion to devolve into a toxic flame war. Our tireless moderator dang has been tremendous at that thus far.