You Can Polish A Turd

"You can't polish a turd." It's a saying that we've all heard and probably even exclaimed a few times ourselves. I used to throw the phrase about myself semi-regularly until one day I had an epiphany — you can polish a turd. In fact, not only is it possible to polish a turd, the process in which I follow for building many of the personal projects that fall into the "because I feel like it" bucket basically follow this very philosophy.

Now I know that describing a regular process of mine in this manner might seem a little demeaning, but I think it accurately describes exactly what often happens when I'm working on a new personal project that I've started on because I feel like building it or just because I want to see if I can build it. I'm also a firm believer that this same process can be a good idea for anyone who is at the stage where they're stuck thinking "I want to build something, but I need to plan it out perfectly before I start."

What You Need

All you need is an idea of what you want to make and a desire to see it come into existence. Your idea doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't even have to be particularly well thought out. It just needs to exist. For most of times that I'm going through this process, my idea is often something vague or incredibly simple — "multiple people able to draw on a canvas at the same time" or "something to document my collection of console games."

The Process

The first step is to take that idea and then start building it. Don't get bogged down in the details of what new frameworks or technologies you'll be using because, chances are, it'll just be another reason to delay actually getting this thing built. Just take the technology/framework that you're most familiar with and start laying it out until you've got something that even mildly resembles what you're trying to get to. You don't need to worry at all about anything like data validation, security, or other best practices at this step — those all come later if you decide that you want to release it for public consumption (but obviously before you release it to the public in the case of security!)

Your second step is where decide whether or not you're happy with what you've got or if you're going to flush it and see what you come out with next time. How you decide if you're happy with it is up to you, but for me it's usually based on if I'm still finding the concept fun to work on now that I can see it in action or showing it off to a few friends to see if they "get it" too. If you've decided to flush it at this point, your next step will be to lay something new out and start from step one again.

If you've decided to keep it, the remaining steps are where the polishing happens. This is where you should start making some decisions to improve what you've just made. For me, it's often taking what may be absolutely horrendous technology choices if kept around for the long term and changing them out piece-by-piece as I add in new features or make other minor functionality tweaks. For you, it might mean the same, or it could range from things like performance increases if speed is important to things like considerable UI changes or refinements.

The important part of the process is just getting something out. If you're constantly being blocked by the detail and planning, then you may never even find out if it's something to polish or something to flush. While what you end up with may or may not be perfect, you've at least got something you can use to validate your idea.

The End Result

Sometimes the end result can turn out to be just a shiny looking turd; something you're not particularly keen on keeping, but it's definitely somewhat nicer to look at that an unpolished one.

Other times you might find that starting out with something you're not overly proud of can quite quickly morph into a passion project that you work on for years and years to follow and it may even be that you generate income from it.

The point is merely that you just get started building something and not worry about it being perfect right out of the gate. Perfection is something that can follow.

First published December 17, 2025