[NobodyNada]

Exactly.

I’ve spent many thousands of hours since my early teens messing around with retro games and gaming systems. I haven’t accomplished anything as “big” as this person, but I’ve gotten to work on some cool things, and through that process I learn so much more about computer architecture and low-level programming than I ever could through school or work. The time I’ve invested into that has paid off in job and educational opportunities that would not have been available to me otherwise.

A hobby project that is both fun and hard is in my experience the best way to gain experience and develop my skills, regardless of whether it’s “useful”.