How To Code Well

130 - Why you NEED a side project!

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Today I am going to talk about side project in web development.  Why you need one, how to stay productive and what projects to learn.  Why is it good to have a side project?     

  • Learn new skills in your own time at your own pace     
  • Learn new technologies and techniques    
  • Work without any constraints.  If you don’t get it done then it doesn’t matter     
  • They encourage creativity and thinking outside of the box     
  • They help you keep focused on the main projects.     
  • They can help with mental health by providing an escape from the ‘real’ work    
  •  They can be used as practice projects before working on production based code    
  •  Great for full stack devs how want to broaden their tool set    
  •  Great for getting out of comfort zone

    • Five ways to stay productive 

    • Create a things to do list.  I use GitHub projects 
    • Create your own issues and PR’s with labels to help organise the different parts of the project 
    • Time box the workload 
    • If it starts to suck then stop.  Update the task list and move on - You are in control of the pressure.  So don’t worry if you don’t finish it. 
    • Reduce the number of side projects you are working on at once.  

      • Five side projects everyone can do 

      • Learn how to automate backups with a cron job 
      • Learn how to configure your dev machine via Ansible 
      • Convert your blog into a web app/pwa/ native app 
      • Start a podcast/YouTube channel that documents your learning journey 
      • Rebuild your last project using a different programming language and document the comparisons
        • ...more
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        How To Code WellBy Peter Fisher
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