Limiting My Side Projects
One of the things I’ve been great at is finding new little side projects to work on. I find a project, start it, think up another project, abandon my current side project to start the next one, only to repeat the process all over again. Needless to say, this doesn’t exactly leave me with much to show for it all.
It’s Not All Negative
I have most definitely learned some things while jumping from project to project. It’s how I helped improve my React skills as well as learned the basics of Blazor. It would however, be nice to have a finished product. I set a goal for myself this year to be able to finish one of my side projects and I have every intention of meeting that goal.
The only thing left to do is to choose what I want to work on. I have it narrowed down to two projects. Both will give me an opportunity to learn some new technologies and hopefully broaden my skillset.
Project Idea 1: Sports Card Organizer
The first idea is an app to organize sports cards. I had originally built the bulk of this using Blazor as a project to teach me Blazor. If I go this route though, I’ll be building it using .NET MAUI instead. I’ve never used MAUI and figure this would be a good project to learn it for.
Project Idea 2: Sports League Manager
The second idea is one I played around with a little bit but never much got anywhere. The league that I play hockey in uses a website and web application that is pretty much garbage. It’s difficult to navigate, full of bugs, and is basically not a good time. It also looks like a website that came out of the late 1990’s or early 2000’s. I know I’m not the only person who has gripes about it. I’ve been considering trying my own hand at building a sports league management solution if for no other reason than to see if I can do better. It’d be a little more complex than the card organizer, but the challenge is part of the fun. If I go this route, I plan to build it using Blazor.
The Plan Going Forward
Obviously, the first thing I need to do is to choose. I’m thinking I’ll spend some time doing some MAUI tutorials to see what it’s all about. It might give me a good jumping off point to see whether that’s the route I want to take or if the league management is what I want to do.
Here’s to making a decision and starting to learn.