Out of quantity comes quality

Posted on:

I randomly came across one of Thomas Edison's way of thinking that had intrigued me. He had committed to produce a minor invention every ten days and a major every six months or so.

The idea was simple, to discover a good idea you have to generate many good ideas and act on them. Out of quantity comes quality. For so long had I been under the impression that quality over quantity is key. Never had I looked at it the other way and saw the value that quantity over quality can also bring.

This got me thinking, could I do something similar for myself? I'm no great inventor, but I'm a self-taught programmer that wants to up his skills. This is a perfect scenario for me to build, test and and hone my craft. Who knows? Out of these little experiments I could potentially find something worth developing and by then I would hopefully have the knowledge and experience to take the idea further.

The plan

I want to commit to building small apps and/or websites that won't take up too much of my time and energy. Each minor project should be well documented and not be too ambitious, but realistic enough for me to explore and/or complete.

I will fail along the way and that's a good thing, each project should be an opportunity for me to learn and grow my understanding of the programming world. I want to explore different tech stacks, frontend, backend, anything that will help me be a well-rounded programmer.

I like the idea of creating something similar to this, where each project will have its dedicated place on this site. The problem is how do I define what is a minor project? I've not thought it all out, but right now I think I just need to get started and develop the idea as I go along.

Perhaps spending 2-4 weeks on each minor project is enough time to build something. That way I won't be too invested in each one and waste time trying to make it work.

I'm going to start listing out a few ideas and start working on the most realistic project. I'm hoping that I can commit to all these minor projects. If I document it well enough it'll be interesting to see how much I would have developed and if I managed to land a major project that has potential.