Sometimes I make a project just to learn something new. Sometimes I make a project just to prove that some crazy idea I had could actually work. Sometimes I make a project in order to reinvent old stuff in a new way that makes more sense to me.

> Let's just not kill fun by spreading pressure to "finish" or "get it done".

Completely agree. I have no idea why people are being shamed for walking away from projects. They aren't paying us, there's no incentive to offset the boring work. There is absolutely no obligation to finish anything. People who don't like that are more than welcome to do it themselves or pay for it.

If people want to spend time finishing and polishing a project, that is absolutely fine. However, it must happen because they wanted to do it, not because they were shamed for not doing it. Nobody has the right to tell people what to do with their valuable time.

What do you think about reframing “walking away” as “done!” or “done for now, no problem if I never get back to it before I die”? Done-enough rather than a nagging presence of unfinished work?

Edit to add: ties in with my reluctance to use “should” with myself or anyone else.

As long as you (a) don't publish your project as open source (i.e., keep it private on GitHub) or (b) put a really big fat warning in the README that it's an experiment that may be abandoned at any time and nobody should rely on it, I guess it's ok... but who really does that?

Publishing a project does not mean you're obligated to maintain it. There is no need to explicitly write this in documentation either. Nobody is obligated to work for free. If people expect to rely on developers, they need to hire them.

I have a very large stash of private unfinished projects for this exact reason.