Programmer Things That Aren't Building The Project
2025-12-01
Written as an extension to things that aren't doing the thing because there are a lot of things that I tend to think are building the project which are in reality not building the project1.
Naming the project is not building the project.
Fixing your broken Arch install is not building the project.
Considering how your project fits with other projects is not building the project.
Writing a blog post about how the project could be done is not building the project.
Wondering how your project will be received is not building the project.
Choosing a language is not building the project.
Configuring your dev environment is not building the project.
Running an initialization command (cargo new, or npm init, or go mod init, or any other) is not (yet) building the project.
Letting a LLM run wild on your project is not building the project2.
Scanning for micro-optimizations in the project is not building the project.
All of these things may at some point be part of the project. You will know when. Most days, they're little distractions while I avoid building the project for the first time.