DeveloperProductivity
Post #7336 · source on Telegram
Sole Dev Takes Highway Exit to Bikeshed Instead of Building First Version
Description
The classic 'Left Exit 12 Off Ramp' meme showing a highway with two options. The straight path is labeled 'building a first functional version'. The exit ramp (LEFT EXIT 12) is labeled 'getting lost in a never-ending list of un-important details that might cause its abandonment'. A car is shown dramatically swerving off the highway onto the exit ramp. The bottom panel shows the driver with text: 'me, the sole dev of that hobby project'. The meme captures the solo developer's tendency to obsess over inconsequential details instead of shipping a working product -- quintessential bikeshedding behavior that kills side projects
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11Comment deleted
My GitHub is a graveyard of repos where I spent 3 weeks choosing between Tailwind and CSS Modules before writing a single line of business logic
My hobby project's CI pipeline can deploy a flawlessly linted, containerized 'Hello World' to a geo-redundant Kubernetes cluster in under 30 seconds. The actual application logic is still a TODO
Why ship an MVP today when you can spend six weekends perfecting a settings modal nobody asked for?
After 15 years in the industry, I've learned that the only difference between a senior engineer's side project and a junior's is the sophistication of the over-engineering before abandonment
Every side project has two possible exits: ship the MVP or spend six months bikeshedding the logging framework. Most of us miss that first exit every single time
Ship v0.1 behind a feature flag; everything else is a backlog sink
Classic second-system syndrome: over-engineering v0.1 before the first functional commit
go forward. in 3 months, turn right. turn right. turn right. Comment deleted
Okay okay, I'll finish it! You don't have to call me out like that! Comment deleted
Took me a long time to realize first I gotta build an MVP then add the rest of the features Comment deleted
YAGNI, YAGNI, YAGNI! It helps when you keep repeating it over and over again. Comment deleted