Honestly, I’m so done. None of the YouTube videos are helpful. Some videos have projects that are so basic and lazy, some are very much tied to a specific platform, like Cloudflare, AWS and GCP, and some are so insanely difficult, I am not sure what project I’m supposed to do.
Some say: to-do projects are too basic. Some say that URL shortener is not worth it. Some say that real-time chat apps are overdone. There’s also front-end stuff, like React, Vue and Svelte. And if that’s not worse, there’s also opinionated answers, for back-end like for example, Rust being the future, avoiding JS or Python, or using niche backend like Phoenix or Laravel and micro-framework in some niche functional language. Then there’s also this low-code/no-code stuff. We’re also supposed to learn extras like Docker, Kubernetes, websockets, service workers and what-not other stuff.
I’ve wasted most of my time worrying about the stack and idea, that I’ve left them incomplete. What do I even make then as my project? A git hosting platform replica? A live-streaming social media? Almost like as if people are looking to hire a one-man army to handle the entire department. I’ve also completed the core lectures for FSO, but I’m still struggling.
I always just write another dice roller, or a Magic: The Gathering life tracker.
The world will never have enough of either of those. /s
Joking aside, make something you have some use for. Yes, your version will be inferior to better projects that already exist. But it will be yours, and you’ll learn a ton by using it and building it and using it and rebuilding it.
And when you abandon it, you’ll still have the experience you gained, and some code you know really well, that you can talk about.
As a hiring manager, I just want to read some of your code.
Your code doesn’t have to impress me, to get hired. Frankly, it’s quite unlikely to.
If I’m hiring for a junior role, I need to get a sense of where you are in your learning journey. Reading some of your code, and talking with you about it, helps with that.