After I came across the article 4 frequent objections to side projects and my answer, I wanted to discuss my reasons and motivation for working on side projects.

It's my solution

There are tons of amazing work out there that solves a lot of problems but that does not mean it's the 100% right solution. Programming is about problem solving and the problems we attack are not always straightforward therefore I can work on a solution that is tailored to my interest and hopefully once I publish someone else might find it just as useful.

I get to play

Our industry is never slowing down therefore there are always new toys to play with. Side projects are a great playground for us because if we are excited about playing with some of these new languages/frameworks/libraries/software this is where we get to get our hands dirty. As stated earlier we can implement solutions for many problems in different ways which enables us to experiment more.

I learn a lot

My ability to apply better problem solving did not come from just my four years at college, it came from all those side projects I built up at hackathons. Every side project took me down a different rabbit hole of issues, therefore I had to actually count on myself to find a solution. Even though I resort to google and stackoverflow, I try to see how people on the internet solved some of the similar issues. Usually those solutions I find stick with me because I personally faced the problem.