> The page you're on right now is my mess. Now go create yours!
While my career has found a balance between impact and financial sustainability, I have a special place in my heart for projects that are otherwise unnecessary but happen just because it brings the creator joy.
Profit doesn't inherently mean you've made the median experience of individual humans better, and is just as often to effect significant degradation. My biz was slightly on the positive, but I could have pegged an extra zero in profit if I had forgone scruples.
You classifications are good but it's a bit simplistic. Generally across the spectrum people is looking for breakthrough (e.g. deep learning) and/or game changing (e.g. transformer) contributions regardless if you're in academia, industry, non-profit, government labs, etc. But for pure joy, it can be from any simple creative projects as you've mentioned or it can be giving up seats for the elderly in a crowded metro trains.
> I used this project as an opportunity to learn about Rust and FUSE file systems. I also think it's hilarious.
> Visitors interested in the code should note that this is an irredeemably messy codebase—it's full of hacks, unidiomatic code, and wildly poor design decisions.
> However, visitors should also note that that's okay. The best way to learn something new is to try it out for yourself—and creating a mess is a vital part of that process.
I absolutely love this sentiment. Why do this? Because it’s fun. And messy. And sometimes, that’s okay. Not everything needs to be a product… sometimes it’s enough to do something because you can… or want to… or because $RANDOM reason. I’m very grateful to the author and whoever decided to submit it today.