Why did I give up on so many projects?

Published: 2022-05-07

If you look at my website's "archives" page, it is clear that there are a lot of projects I gave up on; but why? Furthermore, if you look at my work-in-progress website's "projects" page (2024 update: that website does not exist anymore), you can clearly see that there are a lot of projects I gave up on.

My projects should not be relied on

If you want a long-term solution with frequent security updates and shiny new features, don't use my projects. Projects are projects, not products. Most of them are just things I start when I am bored, that may or may not be finished, and may or may not last.

Neutron still holds its place of longest maintained project, with almost 3 years of development (although it is not as active as it was before); this project is still maintained because people in my family depend on it and I can't give up on Neutron without directing them towards an alternative.

Neutron is also the only still-maintained project that dates from the Minteck Projects era; projects that were still maintained at the time Minteck Projects ended are now all unmaintained.

The whole purpose is studying

I am currently studying systems administration. Although it is not related to software engineering, programming things help me understand a lot about how technology works in general. For example, when working on Kartik's online mode, I learned a lot about TCP and routers; or when I worked on my website's version 9, I learned a lot about CPU threads; and let's not count the enormous AI projects.

That said, most (if not all) of my projects are created on my free time because I want to try out something new (whether it is a new technology, new design practices, or something else), and I only maintain projects that I am still interested in working on. That does not (and will never) mean unmaintained projects will not work as they should; just that bugs will not be fixed.

There are also a lot of projects you have never heard about because they were either just ideas or they were never mature enough to reach at least source code release.

Wrapping up

My projects should not be relied on in a production environment, they are meant for me to learn things and experiment with stuff that gets around my hooves.

Unmaintained projects may still be usable, although bugs won't be fixed; and there is a lot of unmaintained projects because I only maintain what I feel like maintaining.