[HN Gopher] I was stuck on a side project for 5 years - how I fi...
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I was stuck on a side project for 5 years - how I finished it
(2020)
Author : danbst
Score : 99 points
Date : 2021-12-15 20:04 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cassandraxia.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (cassandraxia.com)
| pingsl wrote:
| I ate the shed. The course is well designed. Maybe you can add
| some reminders, e.g. answer should be in a format like 1/5 rather
| than 0.2. :)
| benfarahmand wrote:
| I may or may not be building a shed in my spare time for the past
| 5 years, but I'm positive I'm not making a cake. With prototyping
| and user feedback it feels like I'm not building a shed, but the
| effort many times feels like I'm building a shed. That said, the
| shed definition could be clearer because there are parts of my
| passion project that makes it feel like I'm building a shed (i.e.
| marketing).
| szundi wrote:
| first question with an edit box made me stuck, shed burned
|
| Quite like the cute npcs though
| Swalden123 wrote:
| Love the analogy. I recently started reducing the scope of my
| projects and getting them in front of users as quickly as I can.
| For the first time ever I've actually been launching things as a
| result. "Sheds" can be so mentally draining, especially due to
| the uncertainty of whether anyone will actually want it.
| elmers-glue wrote:
| I've made two side projects so far. The first was a visual JVM
| profiler that was very complex and educational/intellectually
| satisfying to build but when I finished it I had little interest
| or know-how or capital to invest in growing + marketing it.
|
| The second one was as simplest as I could possibly make it. I had
| basically 2 hours per weekend in 2021 (kids & all) and I
| rigorously stuck within my estimated scope. I was really focused
| on making cake. I use the app all the time; it's at least cake to
| me. In 2022 I'll have to figure out if other people think it's
| cake, too. But at least no will able to say I over-scoped it, or
| over-estimated it.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| ...so what was the app?
| bigbassroller wrote:
| Hey thats a nice looking shed!
| gwbas1c wrote:
| The shed is a poor analogy. (Here's the link to the story about
| the shed that took 9 years to build:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/czg04y/shed_is_finally...)
|
| Basically, the guy wasn't a perfectionist. He didn't build and
| tear down 5 different sheds. It just wasn't a priority. It was
| really important to him that he DIY his shed, but "life"
| happened. Every time he set aside a weekend or some funds for the
| shed, something came up.
|
| If he really needed a shed, he could have just ordered one from
| Home Depot. They aren't that expensive and are dropped off, fully
| assembled.
|
| > the shed consumed their free cycles and mind space for 9 years.
|
| No, it was more like a running joke. The shed was an unfinished
| project that was never gotten around to. My dad started finishing
| his basement before I was born, and only finished it over 20
| years later! It was also a running joke in my family.
|
| Ironically, I have a grass-free spot of land in my yard that was
| supposed to be for a dog run. My dog died a few years after I
| built my house. Maybe in 9 years I'll put a shed there.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Huh, that could be me except it's been like 9 years and the
| shed isn't finished yet.
|
| > It just wasn't a priority
|
| Pretty much this!
| SrslyJosh wrote:
| This problem wasn't entirely clear:
|
| > Casting each of the spells in the set is finicky and doesn't
| always succeed. A cast succeeds 20% of the time and is
| independent of previous casts. I need 3 successful casts in a row
| to summon the animal familiar. > What is the probability that I
| summon a familiar on my first try?
|
| I tried inputting the answer as a percentage with "%" and as
| percentage without "%" before I tried inputing it as fraction and
| was able to proceed.
|
| It'd be a good idea to indicate what format the answer needs to
| be in.
| maxbond wrote:
| I imagine they agree and aren't satisfied with the interface,
| but can't give it any more of their time. I take the impression
| they were more concerned about finding a novel and beautiful
| way to present statistics, and to transfer some of their
| passion for the subject to the reader, than creating a usable
| piece of software. (For instance, when they describe coming up
| with entirely different stories and casts of characters,
| repeatedly. Clearly the story is what is important about this
| project to them.)
|
| Personally I've never made it past the first paragraph of a
| story without deleting it, so I salute them for shipping
| _something_.
| fwsgonzo wrote:
| This is his big project, a work on teaching statistics:
| https://cassandraxia.com/wizard/
|
| So far, I'm liking it a lot.
| cipheredStones wrote:
| (The author is a woman.)
| rjbwork wrote:
| Author has a way with words. I chuckled quite a bit. I will not
| eat your shedcake, dear OP, but I have eaten your cake and it was
| pretty good. I may eat another.
| lambic wrote:
| I'm eating your shed. I like it.
| sigmonsays wrote:
| i just built a shed. I wanna know in depth how they built it to
| take 9 years. Nobody? =P
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Not OP, but I started my shed (I think) 8 years ago.
|
| Year 1: dig, place and level footings. Put down floor joists:
| it's just a little 8x10 shed, so they're 2x4's
|
| Year 2: find some scrap 3/4" plywood left over from another
| project for a floor. Realize that it'll just get wet and rot if
| placed, so leave it where it is. Instead frame and raise the
| walls.
|
| Year 3: realize that you should have built the south wall a bit
| higher so the roof can slope, shrug and figure out a way to
| frame the roof so there's a small slope anyway.
|
| Year 4: (I think). Find leftover metal siding and nail it in
| place for a roof. Now that we have a roof, put the plywood
| down, but don't nail it down since without walls, it could
| still get wet and rot.
|
| Year 4.5: realize that the proto-shed is usable as is, and
| start throwing crap in there that needs to be out of the way,
| but can take getting wet.
|
| Years 5 - present. Look at the shed and realize that with less
| than a day's work you could finish it but don't have the
| motivation to go find more siding, drive over there, drive back
| and then nail it up. Maybe next summer...
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Just click the link. I copied here for you:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/czg04y/shed_is_finally...
|
| Summary: The guy bought a house and decided he wanted to build
| a shed. He bought the plans, poured the slab, and then life
| happened.
|
| Basically, every time he had time / money to work on his shed,
| some kind of obligation came up or some kind of emergency ate
| away at his shed funds.
|
| IMO, I think it's just a case of the shed not being that
| important, but the joke being "worth it." If it really was
| important he'd have figured out how to finish it more quickly.
| (It's not that expensive to have someone deliver a small shed
| to a home.)
| dang wrote:
| Submitted title was "Building Sheds: 5 years of polishing, and
| only 3 points on HN". Please don't do that--it's against the site
| guidelines:
|
| " _Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or
| linkbait; don 't editorialize._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| cco wrote:
| Funny, because I think that title is better than the one that
| they chose.
| nonbirithm wrote:
| You can still believe that a project which becomes a shed is
| desired by an audience, however niche, and not care as much about
| getting popularity, which gives you an excuse to keep working.
| You can let a project that you still get enjoyment out of consume
| the rest of your life. It's scary that the thing you willingly do
| to get away from obligation and 9 to 5 work can be at the same
| time the most fulfilling and most debilitating thing you do.
|
| It's even harder to detach when your shed is your idea of "making
| something out of your life", when you imagine the alternative
| being years of wasted potential suppressing your life's true
| desires. Don't people always say to never put off what you want
| to do right now until it's too late? But for someone unable to
| detach, I'm still not sure if remaining dispassionate is worse
| than the chronic issues that arise from lack of sleep and similar
| from never giving up and earning the label of "tenacious".
| shard wrote:
| Not sure if the OP is the author, or if the author will read
| this, but I ate the shed, and at first found it delightful, but
| then got an annoying bit stuck in my teeth.
|
| The Guide first says "The results of the spell are supposed to be
| independent." And I took that at face value, since I figured this
| is an educational page rather than a page of brain teasers and
| trick questions. But then when it asks "in my last 100 casts of
| the spell, I got the gross potion all 100 times, what do you
| think the next cast would yield?", I guess I was supposed to have
| remembered that the original statement said " _supposed_ to be
| independent ", and figure out the lesson was that this indicates
| a problem with the spell not being independent as opposed to
| stressing that regardless of results, independent means
| independent. I feel annoyed rather than enlightened.
| jerf wrote:
| I think that's a really hard problem to phrase correctly no
| matter what you do, because no matter what you do, you're
| swimming upstream against almost the entire mathematical
| education that person has had up to that point. Up to that
| point the answer to "Susie has 37.8 cookies and wants to split
| them evenly weighted by the body mass of the 17 people in her
| class, how many cookies does each person get?" has never been
| "Why the _hell_ does she want to do that? " But that's the kind
| of answer you're fishing for at that point.
|
| No criticism intended of the question itself. Every stats
| course should have it in there somewhere, it's a very important
| one. But I'v personally tried my hand at how to phrase it
| exactly right a couple of times and it's really, really hard.
|
| (Since this is an invitation for 50 people to post their
| attempts, I would also point out it's _easy_ to phrase it in a
| way that works for _you_ , who wrote the question. You might
| find if you take it out for testing that it doesn't work as
| well as you thought, though. But by all means, smash that reply
| button. I can't stop you. :) )
| necovek wrote:
| The focus of the question should not be on the independence
| of the probability, at the very least: you are setting a
| responder up for failure, and that rarely leads to
| satisfaction. Perhaps the only problem is with the given
| response: if it was "Yes, BUT..."
|
| If you expect the "why the hell does she want to do that",
| you can't ask that in a quiz form. Why the hell are we
| collecting potions: I couldn't care less, right? And then you
| suspend your disbelief, and then suddenly, "uh-uh, that's too
| unlikely, you should have questioned your assumptions."
| necovek wrote:
| Yeah, another problem is that none of the answers offered at
| that question is really "right" according to the adventure. I
| also find it contradictory. If you did "cast a spell" a 100
| times, and recorded that sequence, and then asked what's the
| likelihood of getting any particular value after getting
| exactly that sequence, one could argue similarly that there's
| only a 1/2*100 chance of the previous sequence happening (yet
| it just did for the author), so something must be wrong with
| it. Basically, they are saying that some of outputs are _not_
| equally likely, and I am now seriously confused.
|
| This is such an early point to attempt to highlight features in
| purportedly random behaviour that is not really random.
|
| It didn't annoy me, it just made me quit at that point,
| especially as I was already battling the spell terminology.
| giomasce wrote:
| My problem with that question is that it seems to imply that of
| something has a very small probability to happen, then it
| cannot really happen. This is false. The probability of me
| generating my precise GPG or writing this exact comment were
| ridiculously small before these events happened, and still they
| happened.
|
| Or, from another point of view, it's worthless to ask what is
| the probability of something that has already happened. Once
| something has happened (i.e., if you constrain to that thing
| having happened) its probability is one, full stop. You have to
| ask a question before running the experiment.
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