How do you come to terms accepting a hard-worked project is going down?

Question

A few days, ago, I posted [1] on Show HN. It was my first serious project and one that I had decided to actually ask people for feedback. While I did get a few encouraging words and some criticism which I've been working on a lot, I've been getting VERY few downloads (pip installs, here) in the past few days. I'm talking an average of 1-2 or maybe if I'm lucky, 5 a day. It's been only getting worse in the past week - especially in the past few days, and it doesn't look like having too much scope further on. How do I come to terms that something I've worked so hard on for the past month is probably dwindling down? I want to learn from this, and it gets very hard to see it go and accept it's a failed one. Thanks for any advice. [2]'s my project[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27782397[2] https://github.com/BrainStormYourWayIn/sierra

arkitaip · Accepted Answer

Sounds pretty successful for something you worked on for just a month and only exposed to the world for a few days. Most projects never see these numbers because they never see the day of light.
You seem to have high expectations for this project, expecting it to take people by storm from the start. Why? It can take YEARS for code to gain popularity, and even then your niche might be so small that the success feels minor.
We all want our code to make a big splash on GitHub, but the truth is that most open code is worked on by a single dev for years without much fanfare.