Not for the portfolio. Not for the resume. For the reps.
Every side project is a chance to try something you'd never do at work — to design the architecture yourself, to make the wrong call and fix it, to ship something that only exists because you decided it should.
The Ones That Failed
I've started and abandoned at least a dozen projects. Each one taught me something:
- The social app taught me that auth is harder than it looks
- The e-commerce clone taught me that databases deserve respect
- The game engine taught me when to stop reinventing the wheel
The Only Rule
Finish something. It doesn't have to be big. It doesn't have to be good. It just has to be done.
Done projects compound. Abandoned ones evaporate.