I just did it

Usually I’m very keen to prepare myself for a project I create a project document in my Google Docs with a well thought name, a few lines of introduction and the description about the technical stack like language(s), hosting and package I plan to use. Then I create a GitHub repository and start coding, at least that what I aim for; but instead I get distracted by all the details I was thinking of in the first place and read/try them out instead doing what I should focus on.

But this time it was different I didn’t created a project document, I didn’t evaluated the pros and cons about every single package and I didn’t used a source control at all. I just opened the terminal and my text editor of my choice and started coding. Yes I did mistakes and yes one or two times I would like to have a source control to recover my mistakes, but I knew that committing source in this early stage would block my creativity because every step would have to feel like a “feature”.

Now, after I finished my MVP I committed my source code and can start thinking in features I like to add. I guess only you have at least “something” (MVP) you can start enhancing it instead doing premature optimizations to “nothing”.

Here is my MVP called yournal (GitHub), a personal journal without all the unnecessary wrinkles others have. I still have some plans to enhance it a bit but in the end that’s what it should be.

Meteor Meteor.js was a great help realizing my idea. It helps me focusing on the application instead on the framework. This might sounds wrong because meteor is a framework but once you setup the routing the only thing you have to code is html (template) and javascript (event handling).

TL;DR; Don’t prematurely optimize your ideas, build at least a MVP to see if it works out as expected.