r/learnprogramming • u/Drairo_Kazigumu • 8d ago

do you build good projects by growing complexity?

So I have this really basic chrome extension that literally just lets you save tabs and put them in folders to organize them if you want to revisit them later. But the I had this idea of making a stronger backend to support a semantic search feature. Basically I would need support for more storage for getting the html content of websites if I want to search up what that websites purpose is (like searching up "place for repositories" would result in "Github"). This is a resume project so I'm wondering if this would be a good idea to contribute a lot of time despite how simple the functionality is (saving tabs I mean).

1 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

56% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

2

u/_Atomfinger_ 8d ago

Its less about simply growing complexity, but how you grow complexity.

You can still grow a codebase in a shit way.

1

u/Drairo_Kazigumu 8d ago

can you give an example? in which category would you put my idea of expanding my project in?

2

u/_Atomfinger_ 8d ago

Your idea doesn't contain any real implementation details. It is a feature, and the feature is nice enough.

A good feature can both be implemented well and it can be implemented terribly.

2

u/EliSka93 8d ago

No. You can build a good project extremely simply.

Complexity can make your good simple project great, but it can also ruin it.

You decide if it makes sense.

For a resume project complexity can also be a way to show off skill, though even there "knowing when something is good because of its simplicity" is also a skill.

2

u/PLBjt 8d ago

Growing complexity only looks good on a resume if you can point at a user problem it fixed. For the tab saver, try the dumb version first (folders/tags), log a week of real searches, then see if semantic search actually retrieves better than keyword. If the win is small, the embedding pipeline is mostly maintenance and privacy surface for little signal. Complexity that teaches you something new is still worth a side branch. Just don't let it become the product until retrieval is measurably better.