I love this article! I'm going to start my own series of "toys" for my personal edification now, I never thought doing something half-assed would be so much fun! I mean that with the utmost of respect, too, because I have been stressing so much lately trying to build something "commercializable" but I should have been focusing on educating myself and having fun with tiny projects like this, which can be completed in a few days.
You'll find that most successful software out there that attempted to improve or innovate started as a "half assed" toy.
Otherwise the dude would have given up before it's complete.
No one on their own should aim at building a "cathedral". Build a hut. Then add a toilet cause it sucks to shit outside. Then a sewer system because it stinks. A tap to wash your hands. Might add a bed to sleep overnight. Make that a bedroom. Ok now it needs a shower.
2 years from now you have your "cathedral" and other people come shit in your toilet, so making it squeaky clean becomes a priority.
People tend to forget the word software has "soft" in it.
> No one on their own should aim at building a "cathedral". Build a hut. Then add a toilet cause it sucks to shit outside. Then a sewer system because it stinks. A tap to wash your hands. Might add a bed to sleep overnight. Make that a bedroom. Ok now it needs a shower.
I think Halfassed toys and projects meant to actually be "successful" should have a clean separation.
OP seems to have enjoyed making a toy websocket server. I highly doubt they want to turn it into something bulletproof. It seems they just wanted to learn and make a cool blog post.
Fun weekend projects are usually things you can quit or modify.
When one of them gets attached to a real goal, you get stuck reinventing 50 wheels, and if any get tedious, or the tech you wanted to learn gets obsolete, it's much harder to drop them, you get sunk cost fallacy stuff, etc, plus you can't try random stuff.
You have to use a toilet. You can't make a paper mache tuba and shop vac contraption on a project meant to succeed.
If someone is going to slowly build a cathedral, I think that works best with something that has a reasonable MVP.
The only WS server I would choose is one of the top most bulletproof ones in the language I was using. Until you reach that threshold, the product is a terrible idea for anything practical.
If you want to make a WS server for fun, you probably want to go just far enough to learn some stuff and then stop, because a practical one takes months(Unless you're one of those NIH nuts that would rather use something small and DIY than something reliable).
I suspect that the lack of expectations is why so many people seem to enjoy these weekend projects, and why I pretty much regret literally 95% of them, and feel that they were just time drains I didn't enjoy at all.
I expected DIY projects to actually be part of my future goals, and did crap like building light fixtures instead of buying DMX lights.
I learned some things in the process, but I didn't actually start getting closer to where I want to be in my career till I learned to stop, and that nobody cares what tech I invent, they want stuff to work, and they want people who know how to use the stuff they already trust.
