My Experience Launching My First Project…on Reddit.
Bottom line (or top-line, as it were): it was rough, while also being incredibly constructive and exhilarating.
I finished my software bootcamp at General Assembly on Friday, May 21st, and not wanting my precious capstone project to get lost on ‘trash day’ (thanks, Aaron Sorkin), I decided to wait until Monday to launch on LinkedIn. The response was lukewarm, but hey, it’s a Monday.
My capstone project, CodeLockr, is a website designed for software developers who want a clean, simple place to store often used code or instructions that they need regular access to while working. Basically, a small notes app for code.
Simple. Right? Well, once I took the game to Reddit and shared to several subreddits for React, Javascript, Web Developers, and programmers I started to realize this may not be the triumphant release I had hoped for.
“Oh you mean like [this other app] that does it way better? Great.”
But I held on, and throughout the day, the tides began to turn. Upvotes on each of the four posts and true constructive feedback started rolling in, beginning first with some praise, followed by a little, “but why don’t you try this instead?”
I really appreciated what was happening.
If you’ll pardon me borrowing a phrase from the youths, the whole thing was scary af. I felt exposed, nervously checking my Reddit notifications once every 5 minutes like I was waiting on my high-school crush to call me after our night at the prom.
But as scary as it was, so much came out of it. I’ve been receiving issue requests on Github for new features, not to mention an almost 10x increase in the amount of active users on the site, so yeah, this isn’t bad. Best of all, I now have a list of features going into the pipeline that I can get started on, somehow, between having to do a googolplex of interviews each week trying to land a job. But still, purpose.
I do still wake up in the morning, nervous about checking Github.
You work so hard on a project, even one that you aren't creating to change the world or anything, but still, it’s your baby and you want people to like it.
But now the baby is starting to have a family.
A disorganized, sometimes rude family, sure, but it does seem that this rag-tag-group does mostly have one goal in mind: to make CodeLockr better, so I am all about that familial advice and I’m excited to see where things go from here.
Get over the fear of sharing your stuff. Get it out there. Get it tore up, tore down, praised, and hated, and take that bruised code and turn it into your 100,000+ user masterpiece.
That’s what I’m up to. Happy coding. Change the world. ❤
