NiagaraThistle

Oh, I came here because I thought Burt Reynolds and Dom Delouise were back at it.

I'm not sure how old "as you get older" is, but as at 43 and after a decade+ of staring at my computer programming every, I can say that darm mode is the worst and I find it more difficult to read white/light text on black/dark backgrounds. Same with consuming any content on a dark background. Some sites look aesthetically pleasing in Dark mode, but I'd never choose to consume content on them.

Funnily that is also my dream and I have been (slowly) working on making this a reality so I can just be an imposter by myself. But after months (even years) Eurotripr.com is no where near an MVP. I'm even too slow to focus on my own things.

I have 10+ years of web dev experience. I've worked in-house on a team that built up a e-comm cart from scratch with CodeIgnitor (owner wanted way too much customization for an off the shelf solution - or so we thought at the time...). Worked in an agency putting out custom sites for clients.

Up until maybe 2 years ago I was dreadful with Javascript. I could copy/paste/tweak code snippets but could not build anything with it.

I would recommend Brad Traversy's youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC29ju8bIPH5as8OGnQzwJyA) and Udemy (https://www.udemy.com/user/brad-traversy/) tutorials. At least as a starting point. He is a great teacher and takes you from nothing to competency and building multiple projects along the way. He updates his Udemy courses periodically so they are somewhat up-to-date.

This was the order I worked through and I thinks it's all under 200 hours of tutorials, but working through each will obviously take more time. Hope this helps a you as much as it did me.

DISCLAIMER: I have no affiliation whatsoever with Brad, Youtube, or Udemy. This is just what I found useful.

(YT = YouTube, U = Udemy)

HTML Crash Course (YT, 1h);

CSS Crash Course (YT, 1.5h);

Flexbox CSS in 20 Minutes (YT, .5h);

CSS3 Animations & Transitions Crash Course (YT, 30m);

Sass Crash Course (YT, .75h);

Modern HTML & CSS from the Beginning (U, 21h, $15.99);

Bootstrap Beginner Course (YT, 1.25h);

Bootstrap 4 (U, 11.5h, $13.99);

Tailwind CSS Crash Course (YT, .5h);

Materialize CSS from Scratch w/ 5 Projects (U, 10.5h, $13.99);

Javascript Crash Course (YT, 1.5h);

Ajax Crash Course (YT, 1h);

Modern Javascript from the Beginning (U, 21.5h, $16.99);

Pick one framework if you know which you need/want for your job:

React Crash Course (YT, 2h);

React Front to Back (U, 20h, $13.99);

Vue Crash Course (YT, 2h);

Angular Crash Course (YT, 2h);

Angular Front to Back (U, 11.5, $13.99);

Node.js Crash Course (YT, 1.5h);

Node.js API Masterclass with Express and MongoDB (U, 12h, $15.99);

Express.js Crash Course (YT, 1.25h);

MongoDB Crash COurse (YT, .5h);

Build a MEAN JS app in 30 Minutes (YT, .5h) (if you picked Angular above);

MERN Stack Front to Back: Full Stack React, Redux, Next.js (U, 12h, $16.99) (if you picked React above);

MERN Ecommerce from Scratch (U, 15h, $13.99) (if you picked React above);

50 Projects in 50 Days - HTML, CSS, JS (U, 18.5, $13.99);

20 Web Projects with Vanilla Javascript (U, 16h, $13.99);

Typescript Crash Course (YT, 1h)

EDIT: formatting

I just wanted to comment that you are not alone here. I am 43 and have been building websites and web apps for over 10 years and always feel i am the slowest dev in the room. It gives me insane imposter syndrome and causes me extreme stress on the job. I spend hours after work trying to keep up on some projects and still feel my colleagues are running circles around me.

I'm not sure what the answer is, an came here hoping to find one, but I just wanted to say I'm glad to see I'm not the only one that faces this, and neither are you.

I left my job last may. I was a web developer at a branding /marketing agency. The office/people were great, no complaints about the work place at all. But after 5 years (and a similar stretch as an in-house before that), I just felt VERY burnt out. Every day was the same, projects were meaningless, coding wasn't challenging, I felt like an imposter and bored at the same time, I wanted to build my own 'thing' and felt i was running out of time.

I was so checked out at the end, I bombed a big project and was totally stressed over it the entire time. After that, I made a spur-of-the-moment decision while doing a post-mortem with my boss to resign (probably would have been fired anyways).

Haven't worked since May 2021. Worked on my own project for several months, but the burn out is real and I can't seem to get back to a spot where I am 'excited' about anything let alone coding, even for myself. It has definitely taken its toll on my wife and family, and I have started to look for work again although I know this just leads back to burn out feeling and feeling of failure, which I realize I was struggling with before I resigned.

I haven't been able to complete projects - personal, work, home, coding , non-coding - for a long time now and am struggling to figure out why and how to overcome (at this moment I am procrastinating putting up baseboards in our ALMOST finished basement with reading and replying to HN).

In the end, although it was in essence a selfish move that spans many of the options in the poll, I think I quit my job because mentally I needed a break from what I was doing and really don't want to do it for anyone else ever again. The biggest problem with this is that i waited too long to do this and now i can't find the motivation/drive/will/self-dicsipline to even do it for myself now due to extreme burn out.

TraversyMedia on Youtube. Brad has AWESOME tutorial videos, both crash courses to learn and project tutorials to build sites from start to finish to learn the skills you need. He also puts out Udemy Courses, one of which is "HTML / CSS From Scratch" (title might be off a bit) and you can usually get it for $10 from a link on his YouTube vids.

Brad's a great teacher. Good luck!

TL;DR: you are not alone. Every web dev feels this way. Learn what you can, and in a year you'll look back and know what you could have done better, but will still have some level of the same feeling of being an imposter. As long as you kep coding and trying to learn, you ARE NOT AN IMPOSTER and will continue to progress. Sadly the industry just progresses faster and it feels like everyone EXCEPT you are progressing faster.

I think we've all been here. I've been a web developer for almost 15 years (freelance, agency, in-house, HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, Javascript, Wordpress) and I STILL feel completely useless most days and on most projects. Even when I work with Junior Devs, I feel they are faster, know more popular frameworks, produce cooler output than I do.

I've had the conversation with managers about my productivity and skillset. Every single time when I've had the 'imposter syndrome' conversation, my managers would very bluntly tell me my productivity was shit, but my knowledge and code were great. The problem always seems to be myself overthinking or self-doubting, so I become a self-fulling prophecy loop of failure.

Have the talk with the contractor you are working with. Listen to what they tell you. Learn from it. Know that a year from now you will probably feel the same BUT will look back on this project and clearly know what you could have done better and will have more experience to do so going forward.

I think the problem with Web Devs is that we are always comparing ourselves to someone better and further along in their careers, rather than with our peers at our own level. Also, I think since our industry moves so fast and there is always something new to learn that we feel we are falling behind and that adds to an already stressful project/career.

And as for "the code base doesn't look like what you were taught in uni...is this really it?", yes - yes this is really how it is. After I freelanced for a year (and was sure to follow 'best practices') I went on to work in-house for a multi-million $ e-comm company with a team of developers. After 5 years I spent the next 5 years at a branding agency on a team of 3 devs. At neither place did I ever see a 'style-guide', code tests, official processes or best practices, or docs. At the in-house position, we actually built the e-comm cart up from scratch and you'd be lucky to find a comment in the code, let alone official docs or style-guide.

In the real world, at most companys and on most projects (not all, I'm sure there are exceptions at much larger places), you don't have the time, nor does anyone else have the inclination to spend the time on creating documentation or style-guides for 99% or projects. It's just not the priority most times. University is good for THEORY, but for web dev it is usually grossly outdated and not representative of the real world in Web Dev.

Get Clear's book 'Atomic Habits' and also commit to #75Hard. Once the habit is built, it won't really matter if you 'want' to go to the gym, for a walk, run, whatever. You just will because it's habit and you will force yourself to be 'motivated'. Motivation is a farce. It's simply ourselves telling ourselves 'do this thing' when we actually want to do the thing or know we need to do the thing. What you should be focusing on is 'commitment'. Commit to a physical work out every day for 30, 60, 90 days. Then reward yourself or have your wife come up with a reward for you to 'motivate' you to complete the task of working out. Trick yourself into WANTING to do the thing you dread until you stop feeling the dread and the act itself is the reward. It takes time, and it is HARD to get to that point sometimes, but you can get there. I've been in the same boat, and whereas I don't dislike physical workouts, I have often in the past found something to do instead. But after reading 'Atomic Habits' and committing to #75Hard, I built up the fortitude to overcome my procrastination/laziness/whatever to follow-through with my workouts and am now trying to devote that committment to finishing my side projects.

Good luck, hope 2022 is the year you overcome your procrastination/laziness/demotivation/whatever.

Edit: Oh and as you are in a city: Try cycling. It helped ease me into keeping my daily workouts. But I actually do enjoy cycling.

This sounds great. I've been working on a project for 5 months now and am so demotivated and seem to lose entire days without seeming to make any progress. I know my daily routine is in shambles (I've never been good with scheduling or routine) even though I write a LOT of plans and schedules for myself. I would love to read your book / learn more about what you do to help people improve their workflow systems.

years are years. If you've known how to do something, and been doing it in some small way over the past 10 years, it doesn't matter if some was part-time, some full-time, some on your own in the basement. You've been practicing/doing it for 10 years. Now whether you became proficient in it over that 10 years is another matter...

Came here to say this too. Pieter Levels, (@levelsio) from NomadList / RemoteOk, he's over $1m now i think and pushing towards $3m. In all his interviews, he points out that although this is revenue, he saves/profits 90%+ of this figure because his costs are extremely low, just hosting and some APIs i think.

Damn, should have seen that coming - i just got Rickrolled!

I literally just read a great article about this problem yesterday. Sadly my memory is awful and I seem to have cleared my browser history from the last 7 days so I can not find it...

The gist of the article was you need to read books/watch tutorials to learn how to do the basics and how to string those basics together to build things more advanced. But you also need to build things on your own to internalize and progress on what you've learned.

If you spend all your time with books/tutorials you never get out of tutorial hell (this also includes any other method you are using to learn that is NOT building on your own). If on the other hand, you spend all your time just building on your own, you will 1. take longer to grasp and internalize the basics, and 2. spend way too much time reinventing the wheel.

So what to do? Divide your time between the two. Start with a book or tutorial. Follow it verbatim. Finish the project / task it is explaining. THEN delete your code, close the book/tutorial and try to rebuild the project/task. You will stumble. Try to figure out what you can't remember, google it. But only reference the book/tutorial for help when you have exhausted other means (like google, stack overflow, whatever). Use the book/tutorial to get past your sticking point, close it up and continue to on without it.

Eventually you will refinish the project / app, and you will have internalized what you learned from that tutorial's project.

NOW, build something on your own that is SIMILAR but a bit more complex than what you learned in the book/tutorial - add features, etc. Code what you can from what you've learned, google new concepts, and if you are really stuck on bits that were in the book/tutorial, go back to reference those pieces. You're learning new things, internalizing them, and proving you can implement them in custom ways.

I may have mis-paraphrased a bit from the article, but it's pretty close to : Use a book/tutorial to learn how to do the thing -> do the thing again without the book/tutorial -> go do a similar thing on your own.

It's similar to the "Google 'How do I build a website in [X language'" but more structured.

If i can remember the article, I will circle back to add the link

YES! This is going to FINALLY win me the war of how to properly tie shoelaces in my home. My spouse has continuously taught our kids the 'bunny ears' method while i battle to teach them the 'right' way and break this poor tying habit. Thank you OP!

definitely not taking any of your comments as 'being an asshole'. I genuinely appreciate the feedback and advice, and 100% agree with each of your points. I am the first to admit product /= business and project /= startup, but the terms do definitely get interchanged a lot now.

my comments above fail to clarify that 'hunkering down' is not the only aspect of building something successful, nor do i think the '12-, 24-' hour hack sessions (regardless of what you're building) are a good formula to success, i've been very guilty of putting in the work but not doing so smartly in the past. I guess i was just trying to nail home the fact that if you want to start something on the side it IS going to take extra work, and that might be uncomfortable in the beginning, but some work is necessary.

And i also definitely agree with the fact that many of my ideas don't lead to community, and agree that a vibrant community is a great means to success, most of these are 'scratch my own itch' type projects. But my primary point was , good or bad, ideas surround us daily.

Thanks for your advice and feedback. I genuinely appreciate it!

i have achieved the goal.

The question was 1. how to come up with ideas, and 2. how to work on those ideas with a 9-5.

I have achieved both of those. Successfully and profitably, or not, is another question altogether.

Even in the past when i've procrastinated, i still 1. had the ideas to work on, and 2. spent some time after work many days to work on the projects.

If the question had been 'how do you build profitable projects and earn $100k+ per year doing so?', i would not have commented.

But given the 2 questions asked, i definitely have an opinion i could share, regardless if it is agreed upn by anyone else.

my advice wasn't to quit his job. it was a facetious comment combatting the 'i don't have the motivation to work after my 9-5'.

you have to want to put in the work. if you don't want to, wait until a different time in the future where things are better and you can stomach spending a couple hours before or after work to build something.

TL;DR: 1. Ideas are super easy. You just need to realize they don't need to be ground-breaking. The simpler the better. 2. None of us WANT to work more after 9-5 work, especially those of us with families, kids, other non-work commitments. So we need good HABITS and lots of DISCIPLINE to FORCE us to work when we don't want to. Motivation is overrated.

1. This always seems to be the easiest part for me. I never understand people who say 'i just don't have any ideas/problems to work on.' WHAT?! There are literally 100s of tasks you do everyday, that you can turn into a small app to help others do that thing, or take the pain points out of doing that thing.

You don't NEED to care about the task that much, just care enough to spend some time building an app to help others do that thing.

Ideas don't have to be 'earth-shattering', or 'game-changing', or 'industry-changing'. They just need to be something that will help someone else do something. It's insanely simple to 'come up with ideas'. They won't all be MILLION DOLLAR ideas, but ideas are the simple part, imho.

Also, YOU don't have to want to pay for your idea. Most times you never would. Why? Because for whatever reason, you've already found the solution to the problem of your idea? I would never pay for someone to teach me about about underwater basket weaving. But 1. this doesn't mean under water basket weaving is not worth paying for BY THOSE PEOPLE WHO WANT TO LEARN THIS SKILL, nor 2. that just because there are other underwater basket weaving experts out there, that i can't find a small niche of people to teach them what i know about underwater basket weaving.

I am not an underwater basket weaver. But my point is: Just because YOU wouldn't pay for X, doesn't mean X isn't valuable enough to pay for to others. Your goal, no matter your idea, is to find where these people are and show them your finished product. Some of them will buy. If enough don't to replace your income, move on to the next idea. Ideas are a dime a dozen.

Maybe i just have TOO many ideas. Maybe i just have too many BAD ideas. But ideas have never been my problem. EXECUTION is my problem. Which leads to...

2. This can be difficult. When you come up with an idea, you'll get super excited, and have all the motivation in the world to work 10-, 12-, 24-hour stretches, no matter what constraints you have...for the first couple days. Then you'll lose that motivation and will have to rely on DISCIPLINE and HABITS. Motivation is overrated. No matter how motivated you WANT to be, life destroys your motivation: You'll get tired, stuck in the code, bored with non-cool parts of the app, family responsibilities will take priority, your friends will want to hangout, etc. This is when you need to be DISCIPLINED and hopefully have good time management HABITS. I lack both of these integral skills :(

However, they are also simple to build...over time.

You say you don't feel like working on side-projects after working 9-5. Well most of us don't want to either. But the alternative is sticking with the 9-5 grind. If you're like me, that terrifies the F out of you. I'm 42, have a great family, a good 9-5, but everyday of my life i think only of leaving my 9-5. Maybe this is the source of my motivation - i want the freedom to work on what i want when i want, and in this day and age, it has never been easier to do so.

I built out a blog site to make myself accountable and publicly track the progress of building my ideas. I let my bad habits (I hate you, procrastination!!!) and fears stop me from following through last year. I'm on a decent run building , but not publicly discussing/sharing, this year so far). To see what I'm building check it out here: https://solomaker.life/ (at the bottom: click 'Show Startups'). They may not all be the GREATEST or MOST UNIQUE ideas, but everyone of them COULD be monetized, and everyone of them solves some sort of problem i have in my daily life or have faced in my daily life. And by 'problem', i simply mean, 'some sort of task i needed to do that took longer than 15 minutes'. Doesn't matter if something similar already exists: i just want to carve out a small sliver of a small sliver of the global population online.

If the last thing you feel like doing after work is more work, then regardless of any ideas you might come up with, you are simply not ready to build side projects for profit. This is hard, lonely, and takes discipline , time management skills, good habits, and hard work. It doesn't have to for very long, but to get something built, launched, and grown, you've got to have the discipline to work on it when you don't want to work on it. Or just quit your job and work 9-5 on building a profitable start-up. Don't fall into the trap of 'I want the thing, but i don't want to put in the effort of making the thing, so I'm going to ask others how to get the thing, but not put in the necessary time to make the thing.'. Trust me, don't wasted 15 years wishing about it, when it's so simple to just make it happen. All you have to do is start right now.

I've got a couple in various stages (shiny item syndrom maybe ?)

https://ZeroToCentury.com - basically enter in your name, optional email, start date, fitness level, cycling level, and miles / km, and it creates a riding schedule for you to build up to riding a century (100 miles) over the course of about 50 days (depending on riding and fitness levels). It was a quick throw away app that i built to keep myself accountable during the summer / fall to get out and ride my bike. I rode a lot but was not consistent nor did i hit my century...i did lose 20 pounds which i've subsequently gained back since october though :(

https://Eurotripr.com - planned to be a site to showcase itineraries to allow users to plan trips to Europe (COVID obviously threw a wrench in this one), but it's been a goal of mine for over a decade to build something like this that helps people plan trips to Europe and build a community around European Travelers. I recently saw what Pieter Levels did with NomadList and figured it was finally time to get off my A$$ and build the thing...but COVID, life, 9-5, procrastination habit got in the way again

http://craigcampbell.io - Test site for Soccer Skills Training App (its behind a login but free and i won't contact anyone who registers to check it out, i'll probably just delete you) - built this for a local soccer club when COVID first hit to allow coaches to upload training videos (self made or from Youtube/vimeo) and have players compete in app by practicing new skills

http://craigcampbell.io/books.php - My personal reading list - i built this out this month and entered all the books i have in my ever growing 'want to read' pile / library.

https://Solomaker.life - blog site to discuss my journey to try to get out of the 9-5 and build an actual useful project i can monetize. The goal WAS to document my journey daily, but life and procrastination destroy me :/

1. Europe travel itinerary planner

2. Soccer Score Picker / Fan Community

3. Cycling a Century tracker: https://zerotocentury.com/

Traversy Media on Youtube. This guy is a GREAT teacher and has a LOT of free videos you can learn from: Intros to HTML, CSS, Javascript, and real world mini-projects to show you how to build things you can use yourself or in a portfolio. Mostly short videos (less than an hour) and a really easy person to learn from. He taught himself to code and really knows how to explain what might be complex topics in Web Dev and more to people who have never coded before.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC29ju8bIPH5as8OGnQzwJyA

Good luck!

I am in process of launching a web app that lets you plan that trip to Europe you'll be taking when this is all over. Create and share trip Itineraries, show and rank Countries, Cities, and attractions with costs and details. Data is i a beast, its slow currently slow as molasses, but its the first time i've ever put a side project live:

eurotripr.com - feedback would be great as i continue to work on this

Thanks for looking at it. It's very early stage, so yeah I will definitely hit you up when its a bit more polished.

Thank!

Hi, I'm in the early stages of building a web app to allow travelers to score European Countries, Cities, and Attractions, as well as tracking costs for travelers and build and share travel itineraries. The site is a work in progress, and there are features / functionality still unfinished, but I'd love some constructive feedback so i can make the tool as useful as possible once travel is open again. I'm a solo maker, so be nice (but honest) if possible :/

There's a feedback form in the lower left of the site for comments and bug reporting.

Would you use this (when its finished)? Any comments on feature set?

The URL is https://eurotripr.com

TL;DR: I'm building a web app to help European travelers plan trips, rate locations, and track costs for European Travel, I'd love some constructive feedback.

Thanks for anyone with the time to look.