I agree with all the points of this article and would like to add one: Have a quick feedback loop. For me, it's really motivating to be able to make a change and quickly see the results. Many problems just vanish or become tangible to solve when you playfully modify your source code and observe the effect.
I think this is where the choice of language makes a big difference. In Clojure, the difference between a "component" and a separate library/application is literally just adding a `deps.edn` file and then pointing to the directory from the parent project.
I think breaking the project in to small achievable goals is very sensible. But if you take the extra time to make the component stand on its own as a mini-lib .. it's very satisfying. For instance I had to write a "component" that would read some GeoJSON and segment it (it's took me a couple of days and was mostly a wrapped around GDAL or something). I could have hacked together a solution to rush to a demo - but instead I made a small little library out of it. When I was done with it, I had a sense of "I made a thing". To be clear.. it's still kind of ugly and I would be horrified if someone else tried to use it and submitted PRs.. but it's also not a coupled tangle of code in my larger codebase.
as he says "Build for yourself" - the library/application should only do what you need
By contrast, if I was working in C++ making an API and decoupled library would be such a chore that'd never bother
The most important aspect is that this all ends up not just much more satisfying at every step - but it makes your code incredibly decoupled and refactorable. The more you rush to a demo the more your code is coupled and hard to refactor.
This resonates with me. Sometime i want to "turn off" my brain and write shitty code.
Back in the day, i made a lot of toy project. Sometime all the source code is in single file. No respect to modularity. But it was fun, and it worked. Now just try to finish a toy project seem much harder than ever.
This sounds like his approach working on personal projects. I'm really curious about large technical team projects though. What's the best approach to getting stuff done and making sure everyone is working towards the same goal etc.
After 15 years I have yet to see a technical project that hasn't run over budget, over time, under delivered or burnt people out.
I'm sure there are people out there with counter examples who know exactly how to deliver projects at a massive scale. Any links/suggested reading would be appreciated!
tomhow•4h ago
My approach to building large technical projects - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36161397 - June 2023 (27 comments)