Side Project Launch Cold Feet
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Almost a year ago I documented my interest in re-building this blog in an Elixir/Phoenix/LiveView app for the purpose of learning event-sourcing and some new UI concepts. The good news, that project is functionally complete. The bad news, I’m not sure I want to launch it.
When I posted the project outline in “Challenges and Risks” I said:
Not using an out-of-the-box blog system will put notable stress on me to maintain the code and deployment. It will likely be more complex and costly than it was hosting a static website.
That stress is here and front in my mind. To migrate I’ll have to destructure my simple markdown/image folders into a more complex database and S3 storage system and then maintain it. I’m not sure I want to do that.
The public outcome of this project is nothing crazy new / innovative. It’s basically the same kind of website I have today – just more work for me to maintain. I dunno what I want to do.
For now, I think I’m going to step back from Franklin for a month or so and rethink it all. Should I decide to shelve the project, I’ll still be happy with what I learned along the way and could easily extract some things (like my GitHub Actions) into new projects pretty quickly.
I am also starting to debate a new side project but will post more on that when I have my thoughts better shaped.
About the Author. Mike Zornek is a developer and teacher focusing on product design and development with a heavy focus on Elixir and LiveView. In between his projects, Mike helps other teams through consulting. During off hours, he enjoyed watching Phillies baseball and playing relaxing video games.