Being a good enough developer in 2023

26 Jan 2023 - Joost Jansen

As a web developer in 2020 2022 2023 - what year is it anyway? - I try to keep up with the latest trends and have fun while doing it, but sometimes it is hard to come up with a side project.

I often get stuck while thinking of something to build by setting the bar too high for myself. I want my side project to solve a real life problem and I want other people to be able to use it. In other words, I get obsessed by making something useful and I never even start building something.

It’s okay to build something small that doesn’t solve a huge problem for someone else, but that helps you in some way. The most important thing is actually getting the core functionality of your idea working and sharing your work with others. This very website is still a work in progress, but I can share my work here, so the core functionality works. This blog post is not very long but it helped me express something.

Last week I made my first post on Hackernews, in which i shared something I built for fun. I didn’t expect to even get a single upvote. I got 200 instead. I also got a lot of comments which resulted in new ideas for my project. It made me realize the benefit of sharing something unfinished: you are limited to your own perspective. Others will come up with improvements or additions, which might even give you new ideas in turn.