What kind of projects are suited as a portfolio? [on hold]
- by Asyx
I was thinking about finishing up some hobby projects I used myself or am planing to use myself but I'm not sure if a future employer might be put off by them.
For example, if I decided to create a custom website for an online (gaming, maybe) community instead of using an existing CMS, is it a good idea to provide a link to said community website or should I just put up the CMS and pretend like nobody actually uses it?
Also, what about very specific things? I like linguistics and constructing languages. Obviously nobody wants to come up with 1000s of words so people usually use word generators or software to emulate sound shift or software to organise everything and produce dictionaries and such. Would such a project be too specific and too abstract for a portfolio or is the "he did programming work simply for enjoyment and his hobby and not just for money or grades" thing more important? It's quite an abstract hobby and most people don't even know that it's a thing and think the languages you hear in Game of Thrones, Avatar or Star Trek are just gibberish. Explaining such things to people is a pain to begin with especially if said people speak no other language.
Would such things throw an employer off or is the content itself completely irrelevant?
Thanks.
Also, if this is not fitting for the programmers stackexchange, then please, don't close the thread right away but tell me where else to go because I got here though a closed question from stackoverflow. Thanks.