personal-project

Reversing an RSS feed

This could be weird, Have you ever come across a blog which you wanted to read in the chronological order? And that blog could be old, with several hundred posts. When i add this feed to my feed reader, say googlereader, the latest feed comes on top and as i scroll down further, the older posts appear. This could be frustrating if you wa...

How much time in a week do you spend on your hobby project ?

No matter how hard I try, I can't spend more than 4 hours a week given all the other commitments. ...

How do you stay motivated on long projects?

We're in the middle of a fairly large-scale bespoke project for a Client. With almost a year gone, and another year at ahead before the final phase is pegged for delivery... well its a little difficult to stay motivated all the time. I try to alleviate it a couple of ways. Pet Projects & nixers Reading & Education & keeping up to spe...

How do you sustain motivation when working on personal projects?

You're working on a personal project you are excited about, and you enjoy working on it, but you don't feel like working on it. Outside of a work environment there are no external forces to push you forwards, so what do you find are the most successful ways to sustain your motivation though a several-week project? ...

Pet projects

Most of us has one, how long have you been working on your pet project? ...

My very first project. Any suggestions on what to make?

I've repeatedly read that it's great for budding programmers to find a cool project he/she is interested in, so here I am. I'm a beginner-intermediate Java learner and I'm looking for a project to do. At first I was thinking about creating a simple game (inspired by www.java4k.com) but I found no tutorial that guides me at my level. ...

Project hosting for multiple pet projects?

I am looking for a good site to throw up my pet projects. Its nothing I want published to the world at large (if at all possible), its just for stuff that I want to play around with. The big thing is that I am going to need the ability to delete projects when I am done with them, something that wouldn't be supported if I checked multipl...

Finding the time to program in your spare time?

I've got about a dozen programming projects bouncing about my head, and I'd love to contribute to some open source projects, the problem I have is that having spent the entire day staring at Visual Studio and or Eclipse (Sometimes both at the same time...) the last thing I feel like doing when I go home is program. How do you build up t...

Organizing your personal utility code repository

Many of us have a personal repository where we keep our code. Sometimes it's just our hobby code, some people include code from their jobs (shame!), but many of us have a repository in one form or another. This is complicated by the fact that alot of us work in many spaces (Web Development, Windows and Web Services, Console apps) and ma...

What makes a good side project, altruistic or selfish

Open source is hot with loads of pros to it, but what if you aren't motivated to contribute to it but rather have a different motivating like automating your home as much as possible and tech-pimping your car? What would be a better route to follow that will pay off more in the long run. Forcing yourself to contribute to open source be...

Programming outlet after typical 9 - 5 day (language switching)

Okay my goal this year is to really gain valuable experience in C#/ASP.NET and JavaScript. But after a typical 9 - 5 day, I find it really hard to come home and fire up visual studio to try out stuff, afterall I've been using it for over 7 hours. Rather when I get home I find myself drawn to the ruby language and droolling over the aweso...

What professional standards do you maintain in a side/pet project?

When working on your own side project or pet project, you are using your professional skills to develop software, but what professional standards to you stick to? Answers would largely depend on the type of project your working on. A proof of concept or quick demo program might have the worst bit of slapdash cowboy coding. Something so ...

Balance work and fun

It is very hard to find a good development job where you can concentrate only on doing a job to your satisfaction, ignoring all the other factors. There is always a compromise required if you are working for money. Thus, I would like to work on my own projects which will be based on pure interest rather than anything else (like business ...

Finding the motivation for doing spare time projects

I believe that spare time programming projects are an important way to improve my skills as a developer, but lately I've been having troubles finding the motivation to work on them. I used to have at least 2-3 projects going on at all times, but then I got a job in the industry... Don't get me wrong - I love working as a programmer, and...

Site admin without username & password

Right now I'm building a personal site/blog and have pretty much got it they way I want except I'm in two minds about how to add posts to it. It's just me who'll be adding posts and to me having a user / name password to log in seems rather passé ;). I'm looking in to alternatives to play around and experiment with and one idea I have ...

What is the preferred process for sellling a personal project/product?

I have begun work on a personal project that may end up having some real-world applicability. I am beginning to entertain the idea of selling licenses. I am sure some others here have done this before, and I was wondering what successfully processes you've used to do so. There are many questions on SO regarding licensing, legal implicat...

How do you find time for your pet projects?

I work a full day job and have a few pet projects I try to work on. The thing is I can never find time for them. I have noticed that many of the developers contributing to OSS project also have full time jobs and families (and many of them even travel to conventions and have speaking engagements), but I can't figure out how they do it....

Use company laptop for personal project

I'm thinking about starting a new personal project to work on in my spare time. I was wondering if it is ok to use the company laptop for this? I'm using visual studio 2008 for development, which is installed on the laptop using a company license. I do have my own license for visual studio 2008, which is installed on my personal desktop...

Why can't I keep 2 languages in my head at the same time?

At home I'm working on a large personal project written in Java. I recently found employment as a C# developer. After an 8 hour workday reading C# code, I find it very hard to switch back to Java at home. Actually, my home project stalled almost completely since I've been employed. At first I thought I'd have to wait for vacation to ac...

Editing an XML file?

How do I add another element/childnode to a specific parent node in an XML file? Specifically a new video object to the media node. I want to turn this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <media> <Video name="Gladiator"> <English>path1</English> <Chinese>path2</Cinese> <French>path3</French> </Video> <Vi...