S. C. Young

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Side Projects Talk Notes

Side projects reveal a lot about a person. Do you do them to learn? To make money? To meet people? To boost your resume? Do you do short projects, or 6–12 month ones, or longer? Alone, or with a partner, or with a large team?

I gave a short talk about side projects tonight to an audience of first-year Computer Science students at the University of Waterloo. Here are my notes.

• Who am I?

  • Shane Creighton-Young
  • Internships
    • Google, LinkedIn
    • Small and large startups
  • Currently at velocity

• What is a side project?

  • “Side”
    • Not a “main” project; something in addition to work and school
  • “Project”
    • Something “carefully planned” and “designed to achieve a particular aim”
    • Root: “throw forth”

• Why would you do a project?

  • Nathaniel said:
    • Learning
    • Boosting your resume
  • But also:
    • Making money
    • Meeting new people
    • See what you like vs don’t like
    • Learn what you CAN’T do

• What side projects have I done?

  • CS 253 on Udacity
  • Hack the North
  • QKSMS

• When to do side projects?

  • Hackathons
  • Christmas break
  • When you get home from work on ur first co-op

• Tips

  • Don’t learn too many things at once
    • Build upon what you know
  • Come up with an actual thing to build, don’t just “learn the language”
    • Like Nathaniel, who made a runescape bot and a note manager
    • That’s why the cs 253 was a good course —- there’s a project at the end of it
  • Talk about your projects to lots of people and ask for feedback
    • This is good for learning and for meeting people
    • Share to Facebook (i.e. Hackathon Hackers, frosh groups)