Building a Meaningful Engineering Project: When the Process Matters More Than the Product
Slowing down isn’t always easy in tech, but after starting my recent sabbatical (A Sabbatical With Intent), I knew I wanted to approach engineering differently—more deliberately, with a focus on depth and learning.
Most engineering stories start with a problem to solve or a gap in the market. Mine began with a question: What if I built something just to see how well I could build it? Not for a client, not for a deadline, not even to check a box on my résumé—just for the sake of practicing and enjoying the craft, end to end.
Choosing and Shaping a Meaningful Project
I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes a meaningful demo project. Not one that looks good in a portfolio or impresses recruiters with buzzwords, but one that actually teaches you something—one that forces you to confront the messy realities of real-world systems rather than letting you hide behind abstractions and shortcuts.
Most demo projects are deliberately simple: a todo app, a blog engine, a URL shortener. There’s wisdom in that, but they also let you avoid the hard questions. I wanted a project with real complexity—the kind that touches every layer of the stack and forces you to think holistically about users, authentication, data integrity, async communication, and all the challenges that make backend engineering interesting.
But I didn’t just want to build a system and call it a day. I wanted to walk through the entire life-cycle—from the first spark of product definition, through the messy middle of development, all the way to deployment and day-to-day operation. There’s a certain magic in seeing an idea grow legs, stumble, and eventually run in the wild. That’s where the real lessons hide: not just in the code, but in the choices, trade-offs, and little fires you put out along the way.
This isn’t masochism. It’s about practicing in conditions that matter. If you only ever build small, isolated systems, you never learn how to handle the interactions, trade-offs, and emergent behaviors that define real production environments.
But here’s the other criterion: alignment with my values. During this sabbatical, I’ve had time to think about what I want my work to stand for. If I’m going to invest months in a project, I want it to reflect what I actually believe about technology—sustainability, longevity, and community.
Engineering with Values in Mind
I wanted a project where technical excellence and human values aren’t in tension—where doing the engineering right also means doing right by the users. A project where people can not only transact or consume, but also collaborate, share knowledge, and build relationships. That adds complexity (moderation, social features, content curation), but it also makes the project feel more alive, more human.
This project isn’t just about learning a new language or framework. It’s about practicing the disciplines that define good backend engineering: test-driven development, comprehensive documentation, thoughtful API design, robust error handling, security-first thinking. The unglamorous, time-consuming work that separates code that “works on my machine” from code that runs reliably in production.
Looking Ahead: Principles Before Product
Before I reveal what I’m actually building, I want to share some context—the principles and philosophy that shaped this choice. In an upcoming post, I’ll explore the ideas around sustainable technology and building systems that last, and how those ideas translate into practical engineering decisions. With that context in place, then we can walk through the details—the product, the technical stack, and why I chose each piece to embody these principles.
If you’re thinking about starting your own learning project, I hope this gives you permission to choose something ambitious, something that scares you a little, something that reflects what you actually care about. The best projects aren’t always the ones that look good in a portfolio—they’re the ones that change how you think about engineering.