How Do You Start a New Project?

What is HTML All The Things?

HTML All The Things is a web development podcast and discord community which was started by Matt and Mike, developers based in Ontario, Canada.

The podcast speaks to web development topics as well as running a small business, self-employment and time management. You can join them for both their successes and their struggles as they try to manage expanding their Web Development business without stretching themselves too thin.

What's This One About?

This week, Matt and Mike discussed different ways to start new web development projects, breaking them down into two categories: new projects, with no prior versions, or old projects that are being updated/upgraded to a more modern standard.

Topics & Timestamps

This week we came up with a collection of questions that we think may come across a web developer's mind when it

• Episode introduction/explanation | 00:49:00
  - The differences between brand new projects and old projects that are being updated/upgraded

Starting a Completely New Project

• The luxuries of starting a completely new project | 00:01:46
  - What is technical debt and why it happens?
  - Migrations with old datasets and dated databases
• Questions & Discussion | 00:05:50 - 00:31:50
  - Do you explore as many new technologies as possible, since you have the freedom to do so, or do you use whatever is compatible and familiar? | 00:05:50
  - Do you work quickly, or slow and methodical, to make the first public build as perfect as possible? | 00:12:14
  - How much consideration is placed into longevity? Specifically in regards to systems that are supported long-term, or can easily export data in common formats? | 00:26:13

Starting a New Upgrade to a Project

• Updating/upgrading an existing project | 00:31:51
  - Being weighed down by and trying to avoid technical debt
  - Respecting old datasets and databases that may not be able to upgraded
  - Migrations of data and/or features that are dated but must be in the new project version
• Questions & Discussion | 00:35:10 - 01:03:43
  - Can a bad enough old project make you turn away a job for a new project, if the old project needs to be largely respected? | 00:35:10
  - At what point would you write off an old database and re-make the dataset manually? | 00:49:20
  - At what point would you demand a complete re-build with no old features being respected? | 00:55:38

Thank you!

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