3-Month Side Project Retrospective: I Shipped It, But Have Nothing Left
Late last year, I built an app by putting in two hours a day after work, and this week it finally passed app store review. I thought I'd be happy, but honestly, right now I feel more dazed than relieved.
Looking back at what I did over those three months:
- Month 1: I scrapped and rewrote the plan 20 times. That was the biggest waste of time
- Month 2: I just started coding. That's when it started getting fun
- Month 3: Preparing for launch + 3 review rejections
I came away with three takeaways:
1. Rather than pouring time into planning, it's better to build something that works, even just a little
2. App review is stricter than I expected. I got rejected because I was missing a single privacy policy link
3. When you work alone, design ends up being the biggest bottleneck
Bottom line: satisfaction is 6/10. Still, I'm confident I can build the second one much faster. I'm curious how everyone else wraps up their side projects.
3 answers
Fr, I totally relate to scrapping the plan 20 times... I wasted 3 weeks doing that too lol. I guess the move is to just build a piece of crap that works first.
But "just build it instead of planning" is sneakily dangerous advice. The fact that it got fun starting in month two—doesn’t that mean the code you wrote without direction ended up holding you back later? I only figured that out after scrapping and rewriting about three times myself, but at the very least, deciding on the core features and target users in one line before you start is ultimately faster. Starting to code blindly is especially bad for beginners. And you said your satisfaction was 6/10, but "I'm confident I can build the second one much faster" seems like the most important takeaway—I don’t know why you glossed over it in the conclusion. If shipping itself was the goal, that’s a 10/10.