I find aggressive scope-cutting to be one of the most compelling things about building side projects.
I'm shopping for computer parts at the minute so built a quick app to scan UK shop deals, threw it up at a subdomain of my personal site (plug: http://slackfriday.jhope.ie) and let it go. Over cyber monday and later it got loads of traffic and watching a stupidly simple app do it's job was thrilling and liberating.
Even doing agile and lean MVPs every day at work nothing quite matches the level of focus you can reach when you know your own capacity and have a time-limit. I kind of disagree with the OP in that even if you use tech that you're familiar with and have a fleeting idea it's still worth doing every once in a while to remind yourself why and how people use things.
I'm shopping for computer parts at the minute so built a quick app to scan UK shop deals, threw it up at a subdomain of my personal site (plug: http://slackfriday.jhope.ie) and let it go. Over cyber monday and later it got loads of traffic and watching a stupidly simple app do it's job was thrilling and liberating.
Even doing agile and lean MVPs every day at work nothing quite matches the level of focus you can reach when you know your own capacity and have a time-limit. I kind of disagree with the OP in that even if you use tech that you're familiar with and have a fleeting idea it's still worth doing every once in a while to remind yourself why and how people use things.