The tldr is that Some things are better left unfinished.
The longer version:
Some projects are just experiments and learning exercises, even though at the moment we feel like this is going to change the world (note: the world will change anyway).
The reality is that there's just too much stuff - physical products or digital applications, music or movies - it's just too much shit out there !
And not all of it is good, in fact, as with anything - most of it is crap which only adds to the cognitive noise or pollutes the environment.
Why should you contribute your half-assed idea/project/product to the ocean of useless things, apps, art that's out there ?
If during the initial phase of development you don't have a clear answer to this question, then it is OK to abandon it and move on to something else.
There's no shame in accepting that most of the time we have shitty ideas. By "idea" I mean not just the actual technical stuff, but the whole "build a company" ideation that goes along with it - how you're going to get rich and get invited to TV shows, write blog posts which millions retweet and shit like that. A lot of young people unfortunately bet their youth and mental health on trying to prove otherwise.
Creative energy is very similar to (if not the same as) sexual energy. It's something that just 'grows' inside us and it must be released.
But not all of the sexual energy should be used for its intended purpose - creating new humans - otherwise we'd quickly run out of space on the Planet.
Sometimes it is ok to just 'vent' and waste a little bit of that energy in order to make room for fresh 'energy' :).
So it's ok to just "masturbate" intellectually from time to time without actually finishing it.
Career-wise, you probably want to finish one or two, maybe several projects in your life.
Generally I agree that it's just not worth it to release projects and code that are unfinished or not very useful but there's often gems inside these things.
How many of us have struggled with something complicated and found some golden function or bit of code hidden inside some otherwise useless project that solves the problem? Even if you don't use such code it can still be incredibly useful for understanding how things work.
I often rip out the useful bits of unfinished/unreleased projects and just paste them to gist.github.com. Some of them have received comments like, "I don't know where this came from but it's exactly what I was looking for! Thank you!"
Posting your whole useless project can be helpful.
The problem with releasing useless and unfinished projects is that when people are taking your github profile as your resume, they're going to be seeing a bunch of useless, half-finished projects. It doesn't make a very good first impression.
For this reason, I'm increasingly moving my code off Github and onto Bitbucket. Despite having a worse UI, Bitbucket at least allows me to make private repositories for free, which means that I can make repos public if and only if I think it's ready for an interviewer to look at it.
Anecdotally, as someone who occasionally I never "penalize" people for having lots of unfinished projects. If they try interesting things a lot, that's a plus.
I agree, but it's easy to end up falling down a slippery slope this way.
I think a better exercise would be "wrapping up" project that would otherwise sit on finished as quickly and dirtily as possible. If the project is failing, or you've expended its usefulness, Force yourself to "finish" in some way or another, just so it can be "done".
Yes, I came to say the same thing. You can't finish everything you start -- not if you're a creative and curious person -- so figure out which things deserve finishing. Be sure to finish those, and let the rest go.
However there is another side to the coin.
The tldr is that Some things are better left unfinished.
The longer version:
Some projects are just experiments and learning exercises, even though at the moment we feel like this is going to change the world (note: the world will change anyway).
The reality is that there's just too much stuff - physical products or digital applications, music or movies - it's just too much shit out there !
And not all of it is good, in fact, as with anything - most of it is crap which only adds to the cognitive noise or pollutes the environment.
Why should you contribute your half-assed idea/project/product to the ocean of useless things, apps, art that's out there ?
If during the initial phase of development you don't have a clear answer to this question, then it is OK to abandon it and move on to something else.
There's no shame in accepting that most of the time we have shitty ideas. By "idea" I mean not just the actual technical stuff, but the whole "build a company" ideation that goes along with it - how you're going to get rich and get invited to TV shows, write blog posts which millions retweet and shit like that. A lot of young people unfortunately bet their youth and mental health on trying to prove otherwise.
Creative energy is very similar to (if not the same as) sexual energy. It's something that just 'grows' inside us and it must be released. But not all of the sexual energy should be used for its intended purpose - creating new humans - otherwise we'd quickly run out of space on the Planet.
Sometimes it is ok to just 'vent' and waste a little bit of that energy in order to make room for fresh 'energy' :).
So it's ok to just "masturbate" intellectually from time to time without actually finishing it.
Career-wise, you probably want to finish one or two, maybe several projects in your life.