·1 min read
Weekend Projects Are Underrated
developmentlife
I built a CLI tool this weekend that checks if my websites are still alive. Takes eleven lines of code. Saves me from opening four browser tabs every Monday morning.
Nobody will use this tool. It will never get stars on GitHub. It is not innovative. But it is mine, and it solved a problem I had, and it took less time than arguing about architecture in a meeting.
The tech industry has a scaling problem. Not in code. In thinking. We apply enterprise patterns to weekend projects. We design for scale when we have zero users. We write tests for code that will never change.
Sometimes the best engineering decision is to build something small, finish it, and move on. Not everything needs to be a product. Some things can just be a tool that makes your life slightly better.
Nobody will use this tool. It will never get stars on GitHub. It is not innovative. But it is mine, and it solved a problem I had, and it took less time than arguing about architecture in a meeting.
The tech industry has a scaling problem. Not in code. In thinking. We apply enterprise patterns to weekend projects. We design for scale when we have zero users. We write tests for code that will never change.
Sometimes the best engineering decision is to build something small, finish it, and move on. Not everything needs to be a product. Some things can just be a tool that makes your life slightly better.