How my Hobby App Inspired a Feature in my Favorite Word Game
When I began my career break last September, I made a loose “no coding” rule for the first few months. I wanted to decompress, explore some new hobbies, and come back to software only when I actually felt drawn to it, not out of obligation to stay up-to-date on tech. This turned out to be a great call, and I spent several months investing in areas of my life totally unrelated to software engineering, including adopting a dog with my partner, getting back into playing music, and working my way through my ever-growing book and games backlog.
When the new year rolled around, though, I’d spent enough time kicking around ideas for a new project that I actually felt inspired to get back into building again. After cutting my teeth on the 2025 Advent of Code, I was excited to make something on my own.
The end result was a side project I made just for fun, but that ended up resonating with a particular online community and even inspiring a feature in a word game I play every …