Last week I finished the first round of the challenge to publish at least one project per-week for fifty-two consecutive weeks!

I took on this challenge initially for two main reasons;

  • combat pre-publishing paralysis, it is very easy for my tendencies of perfectionism and/or feature-creep to delay publication

  • overcome post-project despondency, because prior to this challenge I’d become somewhat unproductive after publishing

Though as other things went viral across the glob, this challenge became somewhat of a touchstone for maintaining a semblance of sanity during quarantine.

Some weeks went smoothly; everything was planned out, code and documentation just sorta fell into place, and at times I could start new projects too… However, other weeks it was indeed a challenge; implementations requiring numerous rewrites, mild burnout, contracting the most recent global plague, and hardware failures where but some of the events that through a spanner into the publishing schedule.

Things I learned through completing the first round of this challenge;

  • leverage automation and templates wherever applicable

  • start on the next project early if possible

Suggestions to those interested in attempting this challenge;

  • avoid firm due-dates, in other words I committed to publishing once per week and not on a specific day of the week

  • write tests at the same time, or before, writing code

  • use tools that can build documentation from comments

I may try different format for some new projects in the near future. But at the time of writing I plan to turn my focus towards editing, refactoring, and adding features to existing projects… After a short break of course, because this challenge has been a non-stop year of work.