Looking at what I had accomplished over the past two (2) years was a humbling treat. Let's face it. I did a lot. I was busy. But I did not meet any goals, ship any software, and if I am being totally honest ... I really didn't move forward. I was stuck.
Ouch! Yeah.
It was December of 2024. I was staring down the unlimited potential of my wishes, hopes, and dreams. I was reflecting upon what I had accomplished (not much) when it dawned on me: I was pretending to be an entrepreneur by keeping busy doing things that I assumed entrepreneurs did. I needed to do the actual things that real entrepreneurs do ...
- Finish it ... whatever it was. In my case software.
- Ship it. The sooner the better.
- Deliver value.
I needed to focus on what I could deliver and deliver quickly. So I decided to scratch my own itch and wrote BigBlog. I needed a way to publish an embedded blog. The project was small enough and I already had two (2) customers: myself and BigBlog (which was just me again). My goal was to ship something so I did.
UPDATED: I just added a
draftflag to BigBlog to avoid publishing drafts when committing code like this was. Now back to our regularly scheduled post.
So what about those constraints? I spent two (2) years in the wilderness trying to develop and ship something. I discovered the problem was me designing a solution for a Fortune 500 company ... along with all the trappings of such a project. I don't blame myself because I've had 30 years of training to get here. But that ain't gonna get me to where I gotta go! What I do blame myself for is recognizing that me, myself, and I is not a team of four (4) developers, yet working like somehow I was!
I am me. My biggest constraint is that, as just me, I can write software or I can write a blog post or I can do marketing but I cannot do them all at the same time. So how does a single developer get to do all that work? Consistently and over time.
- Nothing gets done fast but I lean on Copilot or other tooling for help. Schedules be damned.
- I plan my work into sprints to allow more focus. It helps me avoid the shiny objects.
- I can remove choices for web design. Terminal CSS is simple enough for me to appreciate.
- I can stick to delivering command line programs. I've spent a lifetime doing this professionally.
These constraints were chosen to help me ship faster. So far it is working. The end result is not perfect, but it works, and for now that will have to do.