[HN Gopher] I was stuck on a side project for 5 years - how I fi... ___________________________________________________________________ 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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-12-15 23:00 UTC)