> So what's a side project [...] that hasn't actually earned you money?
There was a time when I dreamed that my "side project" - Scrawl-canvas[1][2] - would bring me fame and fortune, or maybe a few sponsorships, or a job ...
> Why do you think it hasn't been as successful as you thought it would be?
There's a number of very well established Javascript libraries for the HTML5 canvas element (Konva, Fabric, EaselJS, Two, Three, Pixi, Processing/P5 ... and many others) and, seriously, the world didn't want to know about yet another one.
> What would you do differently if you did it again?
Actually, nothing! The primary goal of my work when I started it was to have a project on GitHub which I could use to help leverage me into the world of professional web development. My library helped me land my first full-time gig, so in that sense it achieved its goals 100%
> How much time/money did you spend building it?
18 months full time before I managed to get a job. Since then, maybe 2-3 days a month (if that) on maintenance and feature development. The upside of having an unpopular JS library is that nobody bothers you with questions about how to do stuff.
For the past 18 months I've spent a lot more time on the project - approaching full-time in some months - rewriting it from scratch, giving it a new focus, etc. The work has helped me come to terms with all the new Javascript shiny, and the ever-evolving Web API standards
> What kind of iterations / improvements did you make to try and salvage it?
I'm not in the business of "salvage" - nowadays I work on the library partly to keep my coding skills sharp (next on the to-do list is learning Rust/WebAssembly to see if I can make the library run a bit faster), but mainly because it's creative and fun[3] and after this year we all need a bit more fun in our lives!
There was a time when I dreamed that my "side project" - Scrawl-canvas[1][2] - would bring me fame and fortune, or maybe a few sponsorships, or a job ...
> Why do you think it hasn't been as successful as you thought it would be?
There's a number of very well established Javascript libraries for the HTML5 canvas element (Konva, Fabric, EaselJS, Two, Three, Pixi, Processing/P5 ... and many others) and, seriously, the world didn't want to know about yet another one.
> What would you do differently if you did it again?
Actually, nothing! The primary goal of my work when I started it was to have a project on GitHub which I could use to help leverage me into the world of professional web development. My library helped me land my first full-time gig, so in that sense it achieved its goals 100%
> How much time/money did you spend building it?
18 months full time before I managed to get a job. Since then, maybe 2-3 days a month (if that) on maintenance and feature development. The upside of having an unpopular JS library is that nobody bothers you with questions about how to do stuff.
For the past 18 months I've spent a lot more time on the project - approaching full-time in some months - rewriting it from scratch, giving it a new focus, etc. The work has helped me come to terms with all the new Javascript shiny, and the ever-evolving Web API standards
> What kind of iterations / improvements did you make to try and salvage it?
I'm not in the business of "salvage" - nowadays I work on the library partly to keep my coding skills sharp (next on the to-do list is learning Rust/WebAssembly to see if I can make the library run a bit faster), but mainly because it's creative and fun[3] and after this year we all need a bit more fun in our lives!
[1] Scrawl-canvas GitHub - https://github.com/KaliedaRik/Scrawl-canvas
[2] Scrawl-canvas home page - https://scrawl-v8.rikweb.org.uk/
[3] My creative coding collection on Codepen - https://codepen.io/collection/DmgxKv