It’s become almost too easy to build a web application. The advent of frameworks like CakePHP, CodeIgniter or Ruby on Rails, have given us the chance to write code as fast as we can think it. This can almost be extrapolated to a number of fields like writing, design, filmmaking, you name it.
But with this reduced barrier from concept to delivery, comes a cost: the final product is usually not very well thought out.
Take, for instance, films like “Benjamin Button” or sites like Plinky. There’s plenty of eye-candy, but at the end of the day, they don’t do much about changing the world. That’s fine and there always be projects like these.
But when it comes to you, what would you rather work on? A meaningful project or a time sinker?
It’s a good exercise to have one sentence that describes what your project will solve in the user’s lives. “MyWidget.com is a site that helps users solve the problem of x, y, z”.
In these past few weeks I’ve been thinking about a project to tackle. A project that will allow me to learn stuff I haven’t had a chance to use in my work environment. I want a project that allows me to learn more about cloud computing and databases (like Amazon’s SimpleDB). So I have a chance to build yet another version of “Hot or Not”, or do something that can help people solve a problem. It’s always easier to take the fun route, but with the current economic downturn, I feel like it’s not the responsible thing to do.
What’s your next world-changing project?
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