Finding out something you've been working on has been done already

Question

I've been working on an a pretty exciting project lately. It has been really fun solving the problems I encounter and it has definitely made me feel better about my abilities when it comes to programming and such.Today I stumbled across a project that is essentially similar to mine (except for minor differences in how they approach problems) and for some reason it significantly lowered the excitement my project has given me.In the end, my question is; how do you guys go about possibly reviving your excitement and motivation for a project after having found out it has been done before? Do other people feel this way?

shehrosemian · Accepted Answer

Congratulations on the project! I used to struggle with this until I decided to make sure everything I worked on had a humanitarian end. It feels more like that Bungie game Destiny 2 in that there is a clear common enemy in the broadest sense of collective identity. Then you would see others doing the same or similar as you as working compatriots who may benefit from collaborating.

bombcar · Answer

Let's name some of the most famous pieces of software today:
1. ZFS - a filesystem, but filesystems had been done before
2. Chrome - a browser, but browsers had been done before
3. Excel - a spreadsheet, but spreadsheets had been done before
4. Caddy - a webserver, but webservers had been done before
5. llvm - a compiler, but compliers had been done before
In fact, I'm hard pressed to identify a famous piece of software that is unarguably the best of its class AND is the original one. gcc might come close, but llvm is perfectly usable.
There's something about being alone on the mountaintop, but since the mountain is always there, and you climbed it, does it matter that someone else was there before or after?

JoeyBananas · Answer

Learn to research and understand what already exists before starting a project.