I like the idea of having an “end of life wrap-up" for half-finished side projects. Rather than just stopping and leaving them abandoned, you make something like a report on what you learned, what you built, and why you're stopping. Then it feels less like you've abandoned something outright.

I've been running my side project - free ecards that are wrong for every occasion - (https://wrongcards.com) for eighteen years. I felt like the internet needed something like that, back in 2008. Back then, it was a tribute to the 90s era of terrible, awful ecards websites, about which I had become oddly nostalgic. It was also semi-intentionally a terrible idea from a SEO perspective (ecause, like, search engines aren't going to help anyone find what is ostensibly WRONG for every occasion) and I built the entire thing out of spite towards what I thought of as the 'new web'.

Now, almost 20 years later, I find I want to preserve something from the old days before it all looked like, well, gestures around wildly. It would be a relief not to maintain the site anymore. But I feel like I'd be disappointing a lot of people, as well. I have no idea how long I'm going to keep this going.

On your side-project it's also ok to ignore best engineering practice, reinvent the wheel because you feel like it or make decisions based on what seems most interesting even if it's not a 'good' decision.

The critical thing is what the author says:

> always make sure that you're doing them for yourself, and for the right reasons

For me my side projects are generally something to have fun with and something to learn new things with. When you're finding it a slog or you feel like you've learnt what what you need to it's fine to just dump it.

Actually finishing something is of course nice and for beginners in particular there's a lot of value in going from that it's mostly there just some loose ends to tie off stage to the actually done stage but you don't have to always do this (or indeed just do it in some select cases).

Hobbyist gamedevs: I only have one project that isn't abandoned, and that's my next one.

Abandoned doesn't have to be forever. As I got older I had a longer time horizon and more skill, and found I was picking up and finishing projects I'd laid aside decades earlier.

Now when I put something aside I know there's a chance I might pick it up again in ten years. There wasn't much evidence of that when I was twenty-five.

It's been one of the best things for me about middle age.

Yea and also with AI I treat throwaway side projects as a way to develop my stack more so that for the next project I can just point Claude to it and say use this as reference instead of having to really work hard on thinking about architecture and scalability for every project . Also helps that you can later use sites at least as a way to get a boost in domain ranking

Here’s my own “graveyard” of projects just from the last few months: https://mesmer.tools/ that immediately got the highest domain ranking I have of all my sites(38), even ones making money

It's funny because he didn't actually abandon it: he finished it, and just found he didn't need it anymore. It's still there, it's still done, and still could be useful to someone (or perhaps himself, in the future, who knows).

I did find it to be a funny twist that, in the act of building the app, he taught himself the thing that the app was supposed to teach him when it was done.

I have such a project I just can't shut down: https://myowndb.com/ I started it 20 years ago, with ruby on rails. I neglected it but then decided to rewrite it in F# and publish it as open source (https://gitlab.com/myowndb/myowndb). There are very few users, some from many years ago, all non paying. None gave any feedback I asked during the rewrite. I should have shut it down years ago, but I just can't take the step. I'm focused on another project now, but who knows, maybe I'll get back to it....

While I understand that by making the quiz app the author had learned everything and had no use afterwards, it's unfortunate to see it not published. My friend is learning Latvian and it would be perfect for her!

Ultimately software (especially these days) beyond "hello world" is never really finished until it's abondoned.