Ask HN: Why can I never get any project ideas or get started with projects?

by Allyedge on 2/8/2023, 10:57:46 PM with 3 comments
I mean, I kind of know why, but have no idea how to fix it.

Usually, I do not know what to code at all. People always come up with crazy projects that amaze me, yet I never get any sort of ideas to build, no matter how much I think or explore.

But for example, last week I wanted to make a project where I could combine GitHub with Discord, where you could find collaborators.

Now, although it sounds nice, I didn't manage to get started with it. I didn't know if I should maybe try microservices while I am at it, which language I should use (I've been liking Rust, Go and Elixir lately, TypeScript and Python are kind of annoying at this point), and so on. I also didn't know what kind of UI I wanted to code, and nust ended up giving up.

At this point I feel like perhaps I should stop trying to find a web project idea, and look for other things, but even there I can't get anything in my mind to code. Maybe my project ideas are just too large scale for me? Since that is kind of a project a large team would build. But on the other hand, why would I build a yet another small project?

I don't know, I am confused.

How can I get out of this state?

  • by SirChainsaw on 2/8/2023, 11:20:54 PM

    I used to get this quite a lot, and still do sometimes.

    What helps me is reminding myself to just start coding _something_ small and very very simple, however imperfect. If I didn't I would concoct hugely scalable and secure architectures and systems in my head. I would go on and on like this for hours and possibly days. It would only really stop when I came up with another idea for a project.

    Twitter/Facebook/Netflix etc etc weren't built from scratch like we see them today; they evolved from imperfect, probably insecure, probably slow, probably unmaintainable code.

    Just try to write something and take it from there.

    I think lots a "techy" people experience this so don't beat yourself up and I'd be interested to hear what others do.

  • by jzombie on 2/8/2023, 11:55:01 PM

    Perhaps you could start thinking of some common features or technology you might use in any of your projects, and work on building that aspect, and let the rest sort itself out.