130 - Why you NEED a side project!

How To Code Well

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4y ago 43:19

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Today I am going to talk about side project in web development. Why you need one, how to stay productive and what projects to learn. Why is it good to have a side project?

Learn new skills in your own time at your own pace
Learn new technologies and techniques
Work without any constraints. If you don’t get it done then it doesn’t matter
They encourage creativity and thinking outside of the box
They help you keep focused on the main projects.
They can help with mental health by providing an escape from the ‘real’ work
They can be used as practice projects before working on production based code
Great for full stack devs how want to broaden their tool set
Great for getting out of comfort zone

Five ways to stay productive

Create a things to do list. I use GitHub projects
Create your own issues and PR’s with labels to help organise the different parts of the project
Time box the workload
If it starts to suck then stop. Update the task list and move on - You are in control of the pressure. So don’t worry if you don’t finish it.
Reduce the number of side projects you are working on at once.

Five side projects everyone can do

Learn how to automate backups with a cron job
Learn how to configure your dev machine via Ansible
Convert your blog into a web app/pwa/ native app
Start a podcast/YouTube channel that documents your learning journey
Rebuild your last project using a different programming language and document the comparisons

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