Question
Hi, looking for ideas for a Ruby on Rails app that one can show to prospective employers ?
- self taught dev.
- thanks
Apart from doing the generic web apps eg., dentist, doctor, plumber, weather an ecommerce, not sure what else I can show to a prospective employer, there is always room for improvement thought about a covid newsletter signup with frequent updates buts that's a simple crud with actionmailer.
Would one need to build a full stack, full scale app ?
Answer
Alex Chiou
I think you're falling into a trap I've seen many developers fall into: Focusing on the technology, complexity, and product space when it comes to projects. None of these are actually that important.
The #1 most important thing when it comes to side projects is this: Do people actually use it?
In the end, the point of a tech company is to build a software product that is used by as many people as possible. It doesn't matter if it does something simple, uses complex frameworks underneath, or is even backed by good code - If the product is providing value to thousands if not millions of people, the company has succeeded.
Your goal with side projects should be to do the exact same thing. Build a product that a ton of people love. The real learning starts when users start trickling in. They point out bugs, so you fix them and learn to write robust code. They complain when your app is unintuitive/ugly, so you polish the design. They leave feedback that you have to consume and respond to in a friendly way, helping you build empathy and community management skills. They ask for features, and you have to learn how to prioritize these feature requests and build a roadmap.
It doesn't matter if your app is front-end only, full-stack, or uses a ton of very complicated APIs - There is a tutorial for every tech framework in existence, so being able to just get something working is not impressive anymore.
Let's say that we have 2 apps:
- A basic (but beautiful) read-only weather app with 100k users.
- A super complicated VR app using machine learning to recognize faces which then uploads its data to the blockchain but only has 5 users.
The weather app is 100x more valuable to employers despite having 1/100 of the complexity of the VR/ML/Blockchain app.
So how do you build a side project that gets a ton of users? Here are some tips to get you started:
- Don't worry at all about product complexity and tech stack. Just pick something you're comfortable with and go from there.
- Solve for a problem that you have.
- If you're on the more junior side and are starting your 1st serious side project, solve for as small a problem as possible.