My myself, I don't have a problem finishing my side-projects. The problem is actually getting people to use them once I have completed them. You just can't predict what will be successful (twitter is an excellent example, as well as whatsapp, instagram, etc).
For myself I was quite lucky in that my very first side-project took off and I've been earning an income out of it for the last 15 years. However every other project I've come up with since then has failed miserably, except for ones related to my core product. Now I mainly try to spend my time improving my existing products and adding features that my customers are asking for, rather than trying to dream up new ones.
Still, I do come up with ideas for amazing new products every month or two - I think that's just the nature of being an entrepreneurial, creative developer. Usually when I do some research I find that someone else has done something very similar already, so I don't waste too much time developing something that will be a dead-end.
Re:Why developers never finish their projects
by xur17 on Friday March 28, 2014 @04:13PM
(#7489689)
I typically build something with users, and where to market already in mind. Both times I created a proof of concept, and presented it to users after a short weekend of coding, so I could see how well the idea 'stuck', and then built from there.
My myself, I don't have a problem finishing my side-projects. The problem is actually getting people to use them once I have completed them. You just can't predict what will be successful (twitter is an excellent example, as well as whatsapp, instagram, etc).
For myself I was quite lucky in that my very first side-project took off and I've been earning an income out of it for the last 15 years. However every other project I've come up with since then has failed miserably, except for ones related to my core product. Now I mainly try to spend my time improving my existing products and adding features that my customers are asking for, rather than trying to dream up new ones.
Still, I do come up with ideas for amazing new products every month or two - I think that's just the nature of being an entrepreneurial, creative developer. Usually when I do some research I find that someone else has done something very similar already, so I don't waste too much time developing something that will be a dead-end.