Over the past few years, I've conducted small surveys among programmers – friends, acquaintances, and colleagues – to find out who among them has personal projects. Today, there's a perception in the industry of a "good developer" who, in addition to their main job, also works on side projects: contributes to open source, creates their own projects, and is active on GitHub. In reality, out of all the people I surveyed – and there were over 50 – only two had personal projects. And one of them had quite serious projects.

What does this mean? Are there no "good developers" among us? Or is this perception incorrect? I lean towards the latter, as I know truly outstanding specialists who don't have personal projects, and this doesn't hinder their development or career progression in any way.

I have a few projects that I work on for fun and to stay up-to-date with modern technologies (working at AWS makes it difficult to learn something new, as almost all the experience gained is only applicable within AWS).

Do you have any personal projects? What are your thoughts on them?

#work