make cool stuff

30 Aug, 2025

this article focuses on breaking free from repetitive programming projects, but its ideas can be applied to any creative field, like film making, music, or art.

are you stuck in tutorial hell, unsure of your next project, or burned out from repetitive coding?

i use niche tools, code in multiple languages, and build unconventional projects just to learn how things work and for the love of the craft. my goal isn’t to make the most money - at least not yet lol.

you don’t need to churn out another crud app or generic saas product just to stand out. you need to make projects for your "learning" purpose.

• make stuff that others would appreciate while using
• reinventing the wheel to appreciate its "roundness"
• make for your own personal usecases

sure not all of this would be "useful" but you learning something valuable that may or may not be useful one day, you kept your curiosity alive - that's what matters.

programming isn’t just about landing a faang gig or shipping the next unicorn startup. it’s about creating stuff that makes you feel alive. build projects that reflect your quirks, your passions, your weird obsessions. whether it’s a regex engine in C or a music synth in google sheets, make it "soulful".

get stuck, learn, and keep that curiosity burning. you got this :)

being good at programming doesn't mean to know every javascript framework, python library and memorize all leetcode hard problems asked in faang, it means to build stuff from first principles that works.

tutorial hell and rot learning can only take only so far, you need to be interested in the underlying principles. you dont need to think about the results, just keep doing what you love.

there are so many "cool" things in programming other than copy pasting gesture detection linkedin slop or react todo with sqlite.

so what should you make?

my advice would be to dissect websites, write game engines or fun games that you would like to play or with your friends, make scripts to automate your daily stuff to save time.

some great projects to learn underlying principles with articles/blogs to start:

• redis from scratch - best for learning about network programming and data structures
  • good starting point
• music visualizer
  • assignment by stanford
• database from scratch - learn persistence, indexing and concurrency
  • sqlite clone from in c
  • golang (more advanced)
• shell in c
• make your own scripting language
  • link
• write your own chip8 emulator
  • c++
  • rust
• front end framework
  • react from scratch (talk)
  • react in 160 lines of javascript (crazy stuff)
• version control like git
  • minimal version in py
• regex engine in c
  • article on speeding up searching
• video player in c
• build your own lisp

you don't have to follow everything in the articles, just see where you got stuck and implement it yourself.

OR you can just whatever you want, but make it soulful not just another knockoff.

another thing you could is making things under HEAVY constraints like:

• neural network in vimscript
  • literally have to handroll all the math functions
  • back-propagation would be the real challenge
• building entire games in shader code
• create databases in css
• write interpreter for languages within other languages
• making music synthesizers in spreadsheet formulas
• bash server written in bash
• compiler written in sed
• 3d engines in batch files.

these challenges will force you to think completely differently. you can't just reach for the obvious solutions or copy-paste from stack overflow.

some small, toy projects under these constraints. highly recommended to see their structure and practice followed:

• C in 4 functions
• Text editor written in C under 1000 lines of code with syntax highlighting and search
• Web browser under couple thousands lines of code (this is considered minimal in the scale of browser)
• Database in 3000 lines with 0 dependencies

another thing i want to write about is making "cool" stuff, what does cool means?

in my opinion, if people fuck with your product, it's cool

my big dawg carl jung once said:

"Know all the theories, master all the techniques, but as you touch a human soul be just another human soul."

you could be the best engineer in the world but if your product feels dead and soulless, no one would care. why?

people dont care about perfection, they care about connection!

let me break it down for you: people dont just use things they relate to them. how?

we yell at our cars when they dont start. we thank our mobile phone after a successful call but why we do this?

because we treat them like a real person, we think our concerns can be met with a personality.

so, try make shit that others feel connected and use them daily. even if no uses it, at least you would use it to save your time and have fun making them.

"maybe the real projects was the friends we made along the way"