Why you should build side projects

I definitely agree with the overall idea of this post, but I realize it's not for everyone. For some, the last thing they want to do at the end of a work day is fire up their personal machine and dig into... more code. (Especially so when there are numerous family obligations to take care of).

That said, I've managed to find some time for a side project[1] as of late, primarily because I wanted to experiment with other technologies that I don't get to utilize in my day-to-day -- I'm write web apps using React / NodeJs.

For my side project... it was more of the same. But this time, I wanted to play around with NextJS. And I had never used IndexedDB (or even much with local storage).

So, it's been a really fun playground to experiment and learn. Even more so when other people are using it and having fun with it as well! And, I've even been able to take some learnings back to my day job, so that's neat, too.

[1] https://tinybots.net/artbot