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Comment by deadbabe | Hacker News Reader

Honestly I doubt this. You can learn endlessly and never get any closer to succeeding in something. It’s like the developer equivalent of people who keep reading business books and case studies and going to network events because they want to start a business.

After 1 or 2 failed side projects, you should have learned roughly 80% of what you need to know. A few more might get you the next 20%, but 17 failed projects is likely not teaching you anything you couldn’t have learned before, you’re just wasting time at that point.

The optimal amount of failures before a successful project is probably about 3. After that, you need to seriously consider that maybe you just don’t have what it takes and move on. Otherwise you spend your whole life chasing something that will probably never happen, and avoiding better opportunities.

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> Otherwise you spend your whole life chasing something that will probably never happen, and avoiding better opportunities.

I'm also have a decent graveyard of domains. I've all but accepted that I'll never create anything of value in my life or even anything awesome.

But the dark side of that is now there's no point to being alive, so I'm planning to die. What are these better opportunities you referenced? Anything that will make a life of mediocrity bearable?

This is brutally honest. In all seriousness, consider that external metrics are not the only way to value life. Economics looks from the outside and judges value. Art looks from the inside and expresses experience. Also, check out Internal Family Systems therapists. I'm learning a lot, and believe this is a very valuable line of inquiry into self & getting unstuck.

A life is still worth living even if you never make anything of value or awesome. Find something you don’t understand at all, and feels impossible, and try to understand it. Repeat until you die or find something else you want to do.

This is mostly what I do, and it's how I got into and continue to progress in tech from an unrelated degree. But I realize that it's unlikely I'll ever outpace the competition as a late 30s father, so my career progression and earnings seem somewhat terminal.

A life without side projects seems pointless, but at the same time the projects are probably ultimately pointless or of too slow progression to merit career leverage.

I seem to have found a path too late in life. Catchup or die seems to be transforming solely into die.

Even if a side project were successful, in time it would also be pointless.

As are all things in time. But I estimate the impact of creating something successful would allow me to feel successful from success until natural end of life vs. feeling like a failure from now until end of life. Plus it will generate higher quality of life for my offspring, and my genetic code likes that.

The question is then reduced to the expected value of success achieved at some point, discounted by how close it is to my stastical life expectancy. Is it positive? Seemingly not. Then I ask what's the point of a life with negative expected value?

It seems like lots of people believe that life itself is a positive, so even a mean existence is worthy. This isn't something I'm able to accept for whatever reason, as I consider life to be EV+ only when it is one, if not two, standard deviations above the mean.

You may never create a successful web business but that’s a long way from never creating anything of value.

By definition most people lead mediocre lives — few doing anything extraordinary. What makes it ‘bearable’ are the simple things: family, friends, work, hobbies, helping other people, contributing to society, etc.

Planning to end it because life seems pointless is depression. Please get professional help.

> What makes it ‘bearable’ are the simple things: family, friends, work, hobbies, helping other people, contributing to society, etc.

I've heard these things and have thought about them previously, but then I think, "How can I meaningfully contribute to society?" And then I get stuck in a loop realizing my contributions will not be anything of merit. And then I think, what would cause a lasting impact and be achievable? And then I realize how mass shooters are born.

Paul Chappell considered becoming a shooter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qvqwrcdx9bg

I think whether your take on this is correct depends on why people are doing side projects. Personally I do them for fun, there's some tool I kind of want to use, or a new programming language I want an excuse to play with. The side project is just a vehicle for that rather than something I expect to become a source of income.

I've got way more than 17 failed projects, and that's fine, because the project was never the point.

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