The Freedom of Pet Projects
In June, I learned how to change diapers and convinced myself that 5 hours of sleep is a luxury. Somewhere in between, I also shipped iOS for Kombine — which was absolutely not on the roadmap. The roadmap said: Android → Backend → Webapp → iOS sometime later. It was a good plan. Reasonable order. And that's exactly the kind of plan a pet project doesn't have to follow. I got bored, so I stopped…
In June, the author discovered how to change diapers and learned that 5 hours of sleep were a luxury. They shipped iOS for Kombine, which was not part of the initial roadmap. The roadmap had Android → Backend → Webapp → iOS in that order, but the project did not adhere to this plan, allowing the author to deviate from it.
The author became bored with the web app and decided to delegate its development to AI. They found that they were not in control of the web app development, which made them feel uncomfortable. The author enjoyed their engineering craft and wanted to maintain control over their projects. Once the web app was feature-ready, they became stuck and unable to debug it or guide the LLM effectively.
The author realized that their initial excitement for the project had turned into boredom, which was actually a form of procrastination. They stopped working on the web app because they had lost interest. Their previous projects had also died when they became bored or overwhelmed with complexity.
Kombine started as a rough Android scaffold without a specific deadline. The author's interest in the project dwindled when they discovered Claude Code, which made rebuilding modules much faster. This allowed them to abandon unfinished projects without feeling guilty. They shipped the Android version, built the web app enough to test pomodoro sync, and then lost interest.
The author returned to Android development and later tried building an iOS app using Kotlin Multiplatform with Compose. They were surprised to find that it worked well. The author now believes that boredom is a signal, not a problem. The best decision they made was not the Kotlin Multiplatform migration, but listening to their intuition and abandoning the web app when they lost interest.
The author encourages people to have pet projects that bring them joy, without adhering to a strict timeline, order of operations, or roadmap. They suggest trying new things and learning new technologies for the sake of personal growth and enjoyment. The author warns against making random pivots in a professional setting but encourages curiosity and experimentation at home.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
