# How Side Projects Helped Sustain Redis Development

DevFeed: [How Side Projects Helped Sustain Redis Development](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/side-projects-20677.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<http://antirez.com/news/86>)

Published: 2015-02-26T12:48:06Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Antirez](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/antirez.md>)

Topics: [Redis](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/redis.md>), [Development](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/development.md>), [Programming](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/programming.md>), [JavaScript](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/javascript.md>), [Lua](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/lua.md>), [Git](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/git.md>)

Tags: [development](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/development.md>), [git](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/git.md>), [javascript](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/javascript.md>), [lua](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/lua.md>), [programming](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/programming.md>), [projects](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/projects.md>), [redis](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/redis.md>), [side-projects](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/side-projects.md>)

## AI overview

The author reflects on Redis's six-year development and describes maintaining a stream of side projects alongside it. These projects provided variety and renewed motivation, while some were incorporated into other people's code. The author says they were then spending about 20% of their time on Disque, a distributed message queue, and 80% on Redis.

## Source excerpt

Today Redis is six years old. This is an incredible accomplishment for me, because in the past I switched to the next thing much faster. There are things that lasted six years in my past, but not like Redis, where after so much time, I still focus most of my everyday energies into. How did I stopped doing new things to focus into an unique effort, drastically monopolizing my professional life? It was a too big sacrifice to do, for an human being with a limited life span. Fortunately I simply never did this, I never stopped doing new things. If I look back at those 6 years, it was an endless stream of side projects, sometimes related to Redis, sometimes not. 1) Load81, children programming environment. 2) Dump1090, software defined radio ADS-B decoder. 3) A Javascript ray tracer. 4) lua-cmsgpack, C implementation of msgpack for Lua. 5) linenoise line editing library. Used in Redis, but well, was not our top priority. 6) lamernews, Redis-based HN clone. 7) Gitan, a small Git web interface. 8) shapeme, images evolver using simulated annealing. 9) Disque, a distributed queue (work in progress right now). And there are much more throw-away projects not listed here. The interesting thing is that many of the projects listed above are not random hacking efforts that had as an unique goal to make me happy. A few found their way into other people's code. Because of the side projects, I was able to do different things when I was stressed and impoverished from doing again and again the same thing. I could later refocus on Redis, and find again the right motivations to have fun with it, because small projects are cool, but to work for years at a single project can provide more value for others in the long run. So currently I'm using something like 20% of my time to hack on Disque, a distributed message queue. So only 80% is left for Redis development, right? Wrong. The deal is between 80% of focus on Redis and 20% on something else, or 0% of focus on Redis in the long term, beca