Over the past few years I’ve slowly accumulated some big side projects. They weren’t done for clients, but just for myself. At some point maintenance of these side projects isn’t fun anymore and hinders the creative juices. I have other things I want to work on, but having these other zombie side projects feels too much like an albatross around my neck.
After much deliberation, I’ve decided to shut down two of my large side projects: BookCheaply and Smooth Bulletin. I really believe both of these projects could do someone some good, but they were both learning projects for me and I don’t see them moving forward anymore. Effective immediately I’m disabling their Apache configs, backing up their DBs, TARing it all together, and putting it somewhere safe. I’ll keep access to the Git repos, but eventually I’ll clone a copy of those out too and archive them. If I don’t get them out of the way completely, I feel like I’ll want to work on them too much.
Shuttering these projects marks a transition for me, where I move from using Python and Django on side projects to Node.js, Express, and Angular. While apprehensive about abandoning my go-to stack for side projects, I’m excited to learn the nooks and crannies of Node (and I still use Python/Django for my day job anyways).
Here’s to the future!
