Could you work on a project for more than 10 years without releasing anything?

Question

I was surfing the web and found myself at 3D Realms hiring page. It sounds quite nice what they are advertising there. Everywhere you can read things like "Freedom from arbitrary completion date pressures".

This sounded very sensible to me since I sometimes have problems with schedules myself. But when I connected the statement with the game they will release "when it's done" Duke Nukem Forever I came to the question: "Could I work on a software project for more than 10 years without releasing anything?"

No release party, no it-finally-shipped feelings etc.

Maybe there are other levels of motivation I don't know about. How would you feel about that?

Btw. some funny stuff about DNF: http://duke.a-13.net

Answer 1

Yes you can...finding someone who will pay you for ten years without releasing anything is another story though.

Answer 2

I couldn't do it. I don't think I could ever concentrate on a single project for 10 years without having anything to show for it. It reminds me a lot of SharpEnviro, a windows replacement shell who's development started some 10 years ago, and they are at release 0.0.7 with no current stable releases. And it's written in Delphi. I couldn't even concentrate on using a single language for a single project for that long. I mean, just wow!

Answer 3

I'd say this very much depends on your personality:

• Is it important for you to get a customer's feedback on what you have implemented, or are you satisfied with the beauty of your code and feedback from collegues?
• Do you want to / like to present your work to the public e.g. doing presentations?
• Will "internal milestone parties" give you the same satisfaction as a release party?
• Can you consistently work towards completing a task without a deadline (or will this lead you to jump from onw task to the other as soon as a task gets boring), leaving a lot of unfinished work?

For me (personally), I would not like to work on something where it looks like it isn't going to be release anyime in the forseeable future as I'd really miss the feedback from the community...

Answer 4

Short answer: "No". You must set goals and release to meet the goals.

Answer 5

If you can is, IMO, a question of personality (see others)

Another aspect is: should you. Here you need to consider things like

• the impact on your resume, esp. if you leave before the release is done or if the project finally fails (a real possibility).
• your professional development. Chances are that both the technology and the methods used will also be at least ten years old when you're finally done.

Answer 6

I'm sorry, but that's not a project. A project is an undertaking with a clear goal, a defined budget and a defined end-date. If you haven't all three of those, you are not working on a project.

Answer 7

Yes, I could. That doesn't mean you (or anyone else) could or should.