Unfinished business
Or unfinished projects. I’ve got lots of them. Late last year, I thought a tool that could help migrate structure and data from one database management system to another (e.g. MySQL to SQL Server) was a good idea. Next, I thought of a way to actually make people using the application on the regular since database migration was probably a once in a lifetime task. That’s how the Universal Database Client project commenced.
Development tool of choice was VS2008. I knew if I had to write a database client, I had to set it apart from others like Navicat, or SQLYog (for MySQL) by addressing some issues I had with using them. I figured those two clients didnt take advantage of multi-threading and always have their GUI frozen when connecting to a database server or running queries. I read up on background tasks in .NET and compared different ways to go about it. Within 3 weeks, I had a working application which could connect to a MySQL server, enumerate databases, show tables, and execute queries.
And that was it. Development was always during my spare time. That spare time never seemed to come anymore. It’s over 3 months now since I last touched a line of code in the project. Seems like every time I think about it, I tend to give an excuse of how overwhelmed I am with my workplace projects.
My Twitter friends came up with several likely reasons for this.
- Lack of interest. I would say I’m really interested in seeing the project as far as possible. Would really love to see it actually downloaded by people all over the world for use in talking to their databases.
- Lack of motivation. I guess they have a point here. I’m probably not motivated enough. But I barely have no excuse. Other FOSS projects live to see the light of day at least. Mine hasn’t.
- Procrastination. Yea. I’m guilty of that.
- Idea no longer feasible. Hell NO!!! This is very much feasible. Besides, its not like I’m spending so much on it. If anything, I develop myself while working on it.
- Other well paying projects. Well, yea. That should be a reason. But it is not a reason in this case anyway.
- Poor project management skills. LOL. I’m not a project manager. But maybe @DamolaSolanke’s right anyway.
I’ve decided to commence development next month. I’ll do my best to stop procrastinating and grow my project management knowledge. By the way, the project is meant to be free and open source. It’s written in C#. I will appreciate additional developers on this project. Contact me if you are interested.
Do you know other steps that should be taken to prevent slow downs in personal projects, sound off in the comments.