As developers, we're no strangers to the allure of side projects. They offer a playground for creativity, a space to explore new technologies, and an opportunity to create something truly unique. But all too often, our big ideas end up in a "Project Graveyard" - a digital repository of abandoned dreams. 

It’s a story every developer knows. You have an idea, you plan to spend a few hours building it over the weekend so you can launch an MVP, see where it goes, and iterate from there. But Sunday evening rolls around and either life got in the way, or you wasted your whole weekend on setup. Most of us abandon these projects due to either time constraints, or the sheer complexity of managing all the aspects of a growing project.

Time: The invisible barrier

Time is one of those things that there’s never enough of when it comes to development. Finding the time to dedicate to your side project when you’re already balancing a full-time job and personal responsibilities can feel like a Herculean task. But when you build a project with Gadget, every project you create comes fully provisioned with hosted, serverless, and autoscaled infrastructure.

It’s easy to oversimplify our big ideas and forget about the amount of setup that goes into building an app — things like creating a database, generating APIs, connecting the frontend, setting up hosting, and on and on. But we set out to build these side projects for the fun of problem solving and creating tools that people actually want to use. In a perfect world, we’d be able to skip the setup entirely and jump straight into writing fun, expressive code.

That’s where Gadget comes in. Gadget is a full-stack, serverless platform that takes all of the boilerplate setup and redundancy out of your code so you can build, host, and launch your projects faster.

Smart Sections is one example of an AI-powered Shopify app that was built in a week with Gadget. Despite never having built a Shopify app before, the team behind Smart Sections managed to create their app in less than 30 hours. With Gadget's built-in Shopify connection, one-click deploys, fully managed database, and instant APIs, the team was able to test and iterate quickly.

Complexity: Simplified

Managing all aspects of a project can be overwhelming. Backend development, frontend design, database management, project management — the list goes on. Gadget simplifies this process by providing a range of features designed to make your life easier.

Gadget alleviates a lot of the complexity by giving you built-in ecommerce integrations, a fully managed Postgres database, hosted React frontends, and auto-generated APIs. You can manage your project without worrying about connecting all the moving pieces, reducing the complexity and making it easy to launch your projects.

Formify is a great example of a tool that was built as a result of Gadget’s simplified development process. The team at Nextools was able to build a Shopify checkout customization tool in less than a week using Gadget. Because Gadget handled all of the infrastructure and so much of the backend logic for them, Nextools was able to focus on building the right experience for their end users. 

Spin up your next side project

Your side projects don't have to remain in the graveyard. Gadget was built by developers for developers, so you could overcome the common challenges of side project development and bring your ideas to life. Whether you're struggling with time constraints, project complexity, or a lack of success with past projects, Gadget is here to help.

Revive your side projects with Gadget. Turn your brilliant ideas into successful apps. Sign up and start building for free, or join our community of Gadget developers over on Discord.