[josephg]

I agree. Years ago over a Christmas break I hand ported the Chipmunk-2d physics engine to javascript because I wanted to understand how it worked. (And wanted to have a physics engine I could use for small games).

It only took me about 2 weeks and it was one of my most memorable experiences of the year. I learned a few great data structures, I learned about JS microoptimization (I got an 8x speed up from the first port to the final version of the code). And I learned all sorts of practical physics - moments of inertia, rotational momentum, restitution, solvers, etc.

It was a silly thing to do by most standards, but acts like that make me a much better engineer.

[nullsense]

At some point in your career after you get sick of the treadmill that is trying to "keep up" and maybe have experienced or been close to burnout at least once and have gone through really asking yourself "why am I doing this?", it's the projects like these that actually help you reconnect with what it is you love about the craft in the first place.