[gen220]

I pretty much agree with you and second guessed including it.

My only justification for including it is that personal projects teach you about how technologies work at the 0-to-1 step (and maybe 1-10). I knew smart people who were extremely confident in the superiority of tool/framework X, because they could write unreadable boilerplate in it for all of their personal projects. Everything was a nail for the hammer.

I generally agree that it’s good practice to start with an empty dir and build from there. But IMO it is no substitute for working on or around projects that have been in prod for at least a couple years.

I agree that working on your own projects is a great way to develop instincts that lead you to being high impact, but it probably took me a year of working experience context (2 or 3 internships) before my side projects actually began training that muscle. I can easily imagine mileage varying there, however.