Code snippets, ideas, applications started and never completed. My contacts and colleagues often hear me say: "I'm thinking of writing a tool for XXX" or "I have prepared a system to YYY." If after a few weeks there isn't news, my contacts and colleagues have learned that the new tool and system ended in the box of old projects.
I'm not ashamed to start more projects than those that come to a deployment. It is part of an innovation process that requires some victim.
But not always.
Today, for example, I found out an old persistence library that can be easily reused in an ongoing project. Other ideas and notes that seemed dead, I must admit, can still work if cleaned and updated.
My suggestion is to not throw away old ideas, old code, old unfinished projects.
Get it out every now and then. Try to remember the idea and the intuition that you had. Rediscover that old projects are better than what you thought. At the right time, they can come to aid.
Flint Lockwood, the nerdy inventor of 'Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs', was able to resolve an apocalyptic disaster thanks to his old inventions that he had just thrown in the trashcan.
We can, too. We don't have spray shoes or flying machines. We don't have ratbirds, but in the past we did something interesting.
It would be a shame to let it die without a last look.
What do you think?
[this post is a lazy translation of the original post in italian language]
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