A chat with my neighbor's kid about his summer job made me feel old

He's 16 and told me he made a simple website for a local shop, charged $500, and said 'I just googled how to do each part.' I've been overthinking my own side projects for months, trying to make them perfect before starting. How do you get past that 'it needs to be perfect' block when you're trying something new?

4 comments

4 Comments

karenc201mo ago

Read a blog post once that called it the 'good enough' rule. Just make it work first. My first coding project was a mess. But it did the thing. Fixed the ugly parts later. That kid gets it. Google the next step, not the whole plan.

white.keith1mo ago

That kid and @karenc20 are onto something. Just start.

spencerross1mo ago

Oh man, I used to be the total opposite! I'd get stuck trying to plan out every single detail before writing a single line of code. It was paralyzing. Seeing stuff like this totally flipped my mindset. Now I just hack together a rough version that works, even if it's ugly, and clean it up from there. It's so much faster.

jesse_smith1011d ago

Wait, you used to plan out every single detail? That sounds like a special kind of torture. I can't imagine mapping out a whole program before even running a test. My brain would just shut down. The idea of writing a perfect plan on paper first is wild to me. Just getting a blinking cursor to do something, anything, feels like the only real start.