Why I failed at building blogs
People often underestimate what they want when building a blog. Text-only? Nah, maybe you will want a Vote System? Images? View Count? Filtering? The scope will keep creeping... and now your initial thought of just writing something on the web is muddled with growing complexities.
This usually happens to me after I made my init repo, and pushed my first chore: init. A post push clarity hits me and would have me asking "Why does it feel like I have so much to do?" Extensibility becomes your obsession because that is what academia trains you to do. Looking at you FIT2099, Object Oriented Programming
"NextJS with MDX? But what about images?"
Boom, first scope creep. Making it easy for you to add blogs. You solve one problem, more pop up. Metadata, categories, sorting, drafts, last edited, creation date, edited by, maybe JSX Showcase? - it never ends. Hours in, you're burnt out, wondering, "Do I even need this shit?"
But your ego won't quit. "Just need a database for votes, comments, view count... OH WAIT, SCROLLING ANIMATIONS!" Suddenly, your simple blog is a Frankenstein's monster of web dev.
Just as you're about to rage-quit to Medium, epiphany strikes: "Holy shit... am I even building this to write?"
Plot twist! This was never about blogging. It's about flexing your l33t coding skillz. That over-engineered mess? It's a neon sign screaming "LOOK HOW AWESOME I AM!"
So, pick a lane:
- Wanna write? Close the IDE, subscribe to bear blog, and type away.
- Wanna code? Embrace the over-engineering. Call it a portfolio piece.
I will just stop pretending it's both. No one cares about my Zustand store if all it holds is "Hello World" and empty promises.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to implement blockchain comments. You know, for extensibility.