PSA: Stop adding everything but the kitchen sink to your first project

I keep seeing beginners on here building a weather app that tracks rain, wind, humidity, and also sends emails, and then they get stuck halfway through. Just build something that shows one number on a screen first, like a simple counter, and you'll actually finish it and learn more.

3 comments

3 Comments

felixhenderson12d ago

That's the whole problem right there. People see these shiny tutorials with 50 features and think they need to include every single thing to make it a "real" project. A counter app that works is better than a weather app that crashes halfway through, lol. The whole point is learning the basics, not trying to build the next big thing. Once you get that counter working, then you can add one more thing like a button to reset it. Then another thing. But people just skip straight to the complicated stuff and wonder why they get stuck.

kimw5712d ago

God yeah, it's like how people buy a deluxe tool set with 200 pieces for their first DIY project and then just stare at it for six months. I see it at work all the time, someone buys a chainsaw to trim one branch off their tree and ends up returning it because they never even took it out of the box. You're way better off buying a single hand saw, cutting that branch, and then maybe borrowing a chainsaw later if you actually need it. Small wins build confidence way faster than big plans do.

young.ryan12d ago

Same here man, I did almost exactly that with a to-do list app and burned out before I even got the damn delete button working. You learn way more by shipping something small that actually works than by planning out a monster project that never sees the light of day.