[short_throw]

If you want learn how things scale across a team and last years, read or contribute to open source code.

It takes years for a single person to get a project to the point where it's a good learning ground for scaling and maintenance.

Gluing a few libraries together is real software engineering but unless you're really invested in the outcome it's not that engaging and it's not that educational.

[p-e-w]

> Gluing a few libraries together is real software engineering but unless you're really invested in the outcome it's not that engaging and it's not that educational.

That's only true if complex systems don't interest you.

Personally, I have always found the experience of "putting the pieces together" and orchestrating highly diverse systems into a coherent whole to be much more educational than learning about algorithmic details. I also generally find making things work well more interesting than making things work.

[exe34]

So if I'm understanding your argument correctly, if you enjoy it, it's what everybody else should do. The other points are just post-hoc justification.

[tonyg]

> That's only true if complex systems don't interest you.

Gluing a few libraries together will certainly produce a complex system.

[Xeamek]

I think your view of low-level projects from scratch is simply wrong, if you describe them as 'algorithmic details'.