Programmers' development projects always fall by the wayside

Programmers’ development projects always fall by the wayside

Many programmers’ projects often fall by the wayside. They have so many good ideas, but many of them are just fantasy. Almost every software developer has a folder like this, many of which are filled with unfinished projects, and many of these programs were really great ideas in their infancy. Like these people, I also have many good ideas, some of which are even used by some companies today. For example, you are deciding whether to make e-commerce profits on eBay or Amazon, building a business-based social network (water pipe industry, electronics industry, software development, etc.), Bitcoin search engine, developing a CSS framework to replace Bootstrap , identifying the most attractive people on Instagram, developing a real-time traffic statistics engine, the list goes on and on. I started almost every project, but never saw a single one completed. When I talk about this topic with my colleagues and friends, they generally reflect that they are the same. Many, many good ideas died in their folders. Why is this happening?

Lack of motivation because of success

First of all, let’s talk about our profession, which has an enviable high employment rate. To put the facts into perspective, the national unemployment rate is about 6.7%, while the unemployment rate for web developers is less than 1%. And our wages are higher than average. In 2012, the average annual income of software developers exceeded $90,000. Of course, if you are good enough now, you can far exceed this number. Watching the newbies who studied with me become entry-level programmers gives me a great sense of personal accomplishment. And the salary of this profession also makes them very satisfied: starting salary is US$45,000 to US$70,000.

So, compared with most other people, especially those who are doing nothing in their jobs, working as a monk all day long, and constantly changing jobs because the salary of the job is not high, software developers are still relatively successful. Please allow me to take the liberty of making a generalization here. Any similarity is purely coincidental. It can be said that programmers who become monks are more successful than these people. It is this sense of superiority over success that numbs our nerves and makes us lack the motivation to accomplish our goals.

Different categories of knowledge

We have extensive knowledge. We can talk about how convenient it is to travel between several cities. We know how to break down a complex problem into small sub-problems and solve them one by one. We are truly "world-savvy" because we can say "Hello World" in any language, and we don't frown even if thousands of calculations are required because we understand the recursive method. We know a lot, but is it enough? The great scientist Einstein once said:

It is dangerous to be knowledgeable and misunderstood; it is even more dangerous to be erudite and conceited.

Newton, as everyone knows, is known as one of the smartest people of his time. He can accurately predict the movements of celestial bodies millions of kilometers away from us. He said that he could see farther by standing on the shoulders of giants. Physics was not his only interest. He also left us precious wealth of knowledge such as calculus. Thinking from this, he should also know a lot about capital and market operations, right?

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Haha, then you are totally wrong! At the height of the South Sea Stock Bubble in 1720, all the cash he had invested evaporated and he went bankrupt. Because he doesn't understand the market, no matter how knowledgeable he is, he can't help him at all. Because his field of knowledge is independent and unrelated - he discovered the laws of object movement, but these laws did not help him grasp the psychology of investors. This is also the case with us. We can spend all day explaining algorithms and studying data structures, but we don't understand what users want. When Twitter first appeared, I took it for granted that it was just a passing fad. Turns out I was wrong. When we solve problems, we often only pursue whether the solution is attractive, but ignore the secular view of the problem.

Keep jumping from job to job

I guarantee that this is the case in every other major city, but here, I only speak for myself and my colleagues and friends’ experiences working in New York. We kept jumping from job to job. But not everyone is like this. I saw in the comments of an online article that some people have been working in the same position for 19 years. I have also discovered that people who are easily attracted to other projects tend not to stay in the same position for too long. It is for this reason that many projects have to be interrupted.

There are many reasons for interrupting a project. For example, when you first enter a new job and you need to concentrate on the projects there, you have to put the original one aside. For another example, because the project we were doing might be similar to what we had done before, we suddenly lost interest. Distance is also a factor, especially if you have to change jobs every few years, it will be even more difficult to persist. Here, I need to mention that it is important to change your mindset. If you're going to quit your job in three years, why not finish your project in three months? If you can maintain this passion, when you are at a loss on a project, a great idea will come to you.

Give new life to aborted projects

For one reason or another, I didn’t let my good idea “come out”. First we acknowledged it, and then we found out why. Now the third step is to fix them. This cannot be accomplished overnight, and many of my projects may still be in this half-dead state. Then I thought for a long time and finally came up with some steps to prevent these projects from becoming a display in the folder forever.

You’re the best

First of all, understand that every project makes you a little – or in some cases a lot – a better developer. Technology takes time to accumulate, so the more projects you develop, the better you will be. Use learning new technologies, new programming languages, and new frameworks as motivation to develop a project, and even if you fail to complete it, you can still learn a lot of knowledge. And if you have other priorities, you can pause the project immediately.

Building project components

You have developed many projects and become more and more proficient. I wonder if you know this little trick - reusing code? Build modules and libraries instead of rewriting them every time you need to use them. If the project you are working on now is not the last one, then I advise you to build some project components instead of just writing code that can only be used in this project. Write yourself some comments in the document so that it will be convenient to use in the next project next time.

Collaborate with everyone

Now that we have a good way to resurrect those aborted projects, are you ready to give it a try? Your idea may be brilliant, as precious as your child, or it may be worth billions of dollars, but as of now – it’s worthless. You need to share your ideas with other people, and the more, the better. This natural excitement keeps you working on the project and moving it forward. You can even open source it and invite everyone to participate. This kind of mutual collaboration will give you a sense of mission, focus on it, and not give up easily.

Solve the problem at your hand

Don’t be too high-spirited, don’t be too ambitious, and try to do something that is really useful to you. If you are a program developer, then solve program problems. If you work in a company, then make programs that the company needs to use. Even if it is your personal side, there will definitely be some problems that can be solved with technology. So why not strike first? Don't wait until problems accumulate before you solve them. Take it one step at a time. At the same time, you can also get some useful programs and so on. Why not?

Don’t ignore small things

There is a saying, don’t think about setting up a company that takes 8 months to start, focus your time on things that can be done in 4 weeks or even less . No matter how simple it is, post your latest results on a fixed day each month. Doing so will have a strong psychological implication and motivate your work. On the contrary, if you sit in front of your laptop and have been tinkering for 8 months trying to do something earth-shattering, but there is no progress, you can imagine how frustrating it is. Quantitative changes will lead to qualitative changes, and if small things are done well, there may be great success. Because the journey of life is a marathon, not a sprint.

Bragging is also a technical job

Social pressure is real. Instead of working secretly, you should tell everyone what you do. The feedback you get may help you improve your product. Maybe you're worried that others will take your ideas as their own, but I can guarantee that this will never happen. Because even if it is a very simple idea, it is very difficult for others to implement it. So there is no need to keep it secret. By speaking out, you can also extract meaningful ideas from everyone's suggestions to improve yourself, and more importantly, doing so will force you to implement it. Otherwise, I don’t know where to put the cowhide if it blows my face, haha.

This is the end of writing. I wonder if you have learned any tips that can help your project? Remember: Action counts. Receive LAMP Brothers' original PHP video tutorial CD/"Essential PHP in Detail" for free. For details, please contact the official customer service:

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