What I Learned From Shipping a Side Project in 6 Months

I finally launched a web service I built by putting in a few hours after work. The features aren't anything special, but since it was my first time seeing a project through to the end, I feel pretty proud of it.

Here's what I learned this time:

• If you keep changing the plan, there's no end. Writing down your MVP criteria on paper was really important.
• Deployment takes longer on environment setup than on code. It's good to learn Docker in advance.
• If you don't set up logging and error monitoring, you'll end up pulling an all-nighter trying to find the cause of failures.
• Using a template rather than designing it yourself is better for your mental health.

Technically, I used a combination of Next.js and Supabase, and it was really convenient for a small project. However, there are limits to the free tier, so I think I'll need to think about costs as users grow.

My next goal is to add payments and gather 100 real users. Good luck to everyone working on side projects.