Side projects Memes

When normal people talk about "free time activities," they're thinking about hiking or Netflix. Developers? We just switch programming languages. Nothing says "relaxation" quite like abandoning your half-finished Node.js project to start a new one in Rust. It's like taking a vacation, except you're still staring at a screen and questioning your life choices at 3 AM.

THE ABSOLUTE TRAGEDY of developer life! 💀 Your code graveyard is SCREAMING with abandoned projects while your brain, that TREACHEROUS VILLAIN, convinces you that starting a shiny new project is the answer to all life's problems! Meanwhile, your GitHub is a CEMETERY of half-implemented features and READMEs that end mid-sentence. But sure, honey, THIS time you'll definitely finish that revolutionary app that combines blockchain, AI, and a toaster API. SUUUURE YOU WILL.

The graveyard of abandoned side projects rises from the depths to drown you while you excitedly reach for that shiny new GitHub repo. It's the developer's version of object permanence—if you can't see those half-implemented features and uncommented functions, they don't exist! Until your hard drive runs out of space from 37 different folders named "final_project_ACTUALLY_FINAL_v2". The cognitive dissonance is real: your brain convincing you that this time you'll definitely finish that microservice architecture while the ghosts of your past React components, unfinished Python scripts, and that one Rust project you started after watching a single YouTube tutorial all lurk beneath the surface.

The diagram perfectly captures the infinite loop of developer optimism. You start with a brilliant idea, immediately create a new GitHub repo, then excitedly tell everyone in Slack how you're "revolutionizing" something. Then... straight back to having another idea without ever writing a single line of actual code. It's the software development equivalent of buying gym equipment in January that becomes an expensive clothes hanger by February. The only thing missing is the 3am caffeine-fueled README.md that promises features you haven't even conceptualized yet.

The eternal flowchart of developer optimism. Notice how there's no actual arrow connecting "Tell everyone" to "Finish project"? That's because after you've bragged about your revolutionary idea to automate your coffee maker with blockchain, the motivation mysteriously evaporates. The missing step should be "Discover 47 GitHub repos that already did it better." Your project graveyard is just getting started, friend.

Future Twitter from 2025 coming in hot with the tech founder banter we didn't know we needed! Bill Gates asking what VIBE stands for in "Vibe Coding" only to have Linux creator Linus Torvalds drop the perfect acronym: "Very Inefficient But Entertaining." That's basically the definition of every side project I've ever built at 2AM while convincing myself it's "revolutionary." Writing 200 lines when 10 would do, but hey—it has RGB effects!

Ever notice how we've mastered creating 748 different to-do list apps but still haven't figured out flying cars? The tech industry in a nutshell—spending countless hours building yet another CRUD app with authentication while our sci-fi dreams collect dust. Meanwhile, bootcamp grads are busy creating weather apps that tell you it's raining... while you're standing in the rain. The real innovation bottleneck isn't technology—it's developers padding their GitHub profiles with projects nobody asked for instead of building the jetpacks we were promised. Maybe if we redirected the collective brainpower spent on "Uber for dogs" startups, we'd actually have those self-tying shoes from Back to the Future by now.

The eternal developer cycle: abandoning a graveyard of unfinished projects to chase the dopamine hit of starting something new. That shiny new project idea looks so promising while you're neck-deep in technical debt and spaghetti code from your previous attempts. "This time I'll use proper documentation! This time I'll write tests first! This time I won't hardcode everything!" Spoiler alert: you won't. But hey, at least the first three days of every new project feel like pure genius before reality sets in.

The classic tale of developer overengineering, brought to you by "pingusVM" - a project that died before it lived. Nothing screams "I've been coding too long" like deciding your VM needs both stack AND register-based architecture when one would've done just fine. Meanwhile, WebAssembly is sitting there like "been there, solved that" while our ambitious dev realizes they've reinvented a square wheel. The best projects are the ones you abandon after that 2AM moment of clarity when you realize you're competing with an entire team at Google. But hey, at least they got a funny name out of it. RIP pingusVM (2023-2023) - we hardly knew ye.