Side Projects: The Unsung Heroes of Software Development

Technology today allows us to take our creations and share them with the world almost instantly. Unfortunately however, many software developers never take the jump into the wonderous world of side projects.

In this talk, I will share the story of poe.ninja, a website created in 2016 as a response to a friend's complaint about the complexity of the economy in the video game Path of Exile. What began as a weekend project evolved into a popular community website, attracting over 4 million daily page views during peak times, ranking among the top 5000 websites globally and being the data foundation for many other community tools.

Built on a foundation of ASP.NET Core, C#, TypeScript and React, the website was initially designed to operate on a single CPU core, a constraint made partly out of challenge and necessity, but has later become a key design principle, although the number of cores has increased over time. Furthermore the time constraint naturally associated with side projects have provided a healthy perspective on quality versus speed.

This story is not just about the technical growth of a website but the personal and professional growth it fosters. Side projects offer a unique sandbox for fast feedback, experimentation, and a holistic understanding of technology stacks.

The session will also offer guidance on managing side projects, from the merits of maintaining a project as a personal playground to learning from the multitude of projects that never see the light of day. It will underline the philosophy that the journey of exploration and learning is as valuable as the destination, encouraging the audience to embrace side projects as a means to discover, learn, and innovate.