I do not understand this reasoning and divide between student and post-student for lack of a better word. I have math/cs education, have worked both in startups and big companies, in the front-end, rendering and ai in the (“serious”) game industry. I have always worked on exactly these sort of educational projects on my own and it’s a complete joy: git client from scratch - yep, useless, but extremely educational, jit for befunge - same, etc etc. I am extremely happy people still engage and do “useless”stuff and HN is for me a big inspiration in that sense.