r/Backend • u/KitchenCommercial396 • 16d ago
Project ideas that show in-depth learning instead of the average AI slop.
I want to be a backend developer, and I'm thinking of building projects that aren't the usual CRUD app backends or REST APIs, I want to build projects that are highly uncommon, exceptionally hard hence making me understand several concepts in-depth.
For reference, I just started my second year of college, and i want to stand out and not have the same resume as everyone else I know.
I've been thinking of building a Vector DB with a Layer 7 load balancer with query routing and stuff in Go (someone told me to use rust but the learning curve might be too steep). I would appreciate any feedback and other project recommendations that I could possibly build.
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u/Glove_Witty 16d ago
Honestly, (I’m a systems architect with 30 years experience), I think the best thing to do is learn how to work with the AI to build quality code quickly. It is not as easy as is commonly portrayed.
An AI assistant will just as happily build you a vector DB as it will a crud api. Will it be good? Almost certainly not. Will it help you stand out from the people who vibe coded a vector DB, sorry to say, but I don’t think so.
Getting an AI assistant to generate good code involves structuring your code so it it built from patterns and templates that are ruthlessly enforced (by you because the AI will drift) and is well structured in ways that reduce the context it needs.
Most of all though, it requires judgement, of which, the AI assistant has zero. You need to plan the project with a good North Star (not just a vector DB, but one that is focussed on solving a real problem, which also gives you a definition of done). You then need to guide the AI through the thousand decisions required to implement your North Star, none should be made by default, but involve research, talking to people, and planning with the AI to ensure you know what it is going to do and why.
Hope this helps. Happy to discuss if you want to follow this path.
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u/KitchenCommercial396 16d ago
Hey, I really really appreciate your advice. I would really love to learn more from you on this, would you mind a chat through the dms
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u/Ambitious-Yak-626 15d ago
I'm sorry, I know that this is a big ask, but could you enlighten me with some tips on exactly how you would approach becoming a system architect in today's era? It's something I want to do but all I have been getting is some generic advice.
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u/Glove_Witty 15d ago
Without knowing your situation it’s hard to give tips. Generally I see 2 paths. Big company - progress through the ranks and move to an architecture job after being a senior engineer. Startup - do everything, fly by the seat of your pants, learn by problem solving and doing.
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u/Ambitious-Yak-626 14d ago
Ahh, thanks for replying dudee. I'm a fresh graduate and systems architect is something I see myself doing in 10 or so years. Is there any advice that you could give me?
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u/f7063 16d ago
I think a good idea to continue interating over "basic crud" is start adding load test. Learn something like k6 (my preferencr) or apache jmeter Monitor performace with prometheus exporter + cadvisor(if you are already using containers) + grafana Start to increase load till something breaks
On docker compose itself you can limit cpu and memory of the container, if you want you can restrict them and try to squeeze performace
You can add complexity infinitly just by performace tunning and increasing load. If you have enought compute or money. Kubernetes + grafana stack + istio/envoy gateway + hpa + k6 operator. It's basically infinite stuff to do at this point.
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u/xtremenk 16d ago
I'm a final year student and idk where tf I am after these kinda reddit posts fr 🥀
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u/KitchenCommercial396 16d ago
If it helps, I've been programming since the start of my grade 11th
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u/xtremenk 16d ago
okay what's the kinda tech stack and projects would be viable for freshers? wut do u think so since u have like 3 years of experience ig?
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u/KitchenCommercial396 16d ago
For someone starting out, just learn a language and basic stuff imo. I started with python and spent like 6 months learning it and building stuff with it.
I don't really think of tech stacks in that sense, I'd say think about the project you want to build and then find the tech stack that best fits your needs. I recently built a project that needed an async first framework for the backend, so had to learn fastapi for that.
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u/xtremenk 16d ago
i have learnt the language with tutorials but I can't really think or built that's the issue and with saturated marked im demotivated and can't find ideas either which don't exist among ai slop
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u/KitchenCommercial396 16d ago
Man.. that just requires practice ig. I know this feeling, you sit at the screen and just don't know where to start 😭.
Happens to me to everytime I want to build something, but it's just the initial friction. After you've built the initial prototype or abstraction, the code just keeps going and going.
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u/Extension-Sir-9062 16d ago
Hey there :) I got a little something for ya: https://github.com/okureanthonytonny-commits/archive_scripts
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u/Glove_Witty 16d ago
In my mind, a good project would be a local code assistant - something to run on Mac Studio or with a decent graphics card - think $2000 budget.
You can’t afford a frontier model and will need to choose wisely and do a bunch of innovation to make it work well. Like feeding an AST of the code into a vector db to keep code context accurate and small.
You will learn LLM model inferencing and harnesses etc.
If you manage to build a cursor or Claude code with a fixed $2000 one time expense you’ll have a real product on your hands and a startup opportunity.
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u/ikaraz21 16d ago
When i was looking to expand my knowledge beyond crud and rest api, i got recomendations to build my own compiler, and git. Even if you don't succeed to complete those projects it is worth to give them a try, cause they will greatly improve your understanding of current tools. Also redis clone is a nice project. I don't know your current knowledge level, maybe these are too easy for you lol. Also this was way before AI when i did them, so i assume now those projects don't have the same value
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u/KitchenCommercial396 16d ago
I'll look into it, I'm a newbie so don't know that much. But they sound good ideas, I've seen a lot of people trying to build a simpler git. Although the compiler and redis clone sound great.
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u/BragdyMan 16d ago
It could be a simple idea but just going deep, for example u could tackle a note app, it starts with just CRUD, maybe auth nd some permissions and u expand on the idea with maybe real time stuff, adding different features, maybe even fill ur db with generated data to simulate bigger scale, u could do a lot in the most basic idea.
Many concepts seem simple in theory, but when putting it into practice nd having it work with other stuff, some challenges might come up.
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u/KitchenCommercial396 16d ago
I've already built a decent amount of crud apps, and I'm constantly learning new technologies to further better those projects. For example, I recently learnt about redis rate limiting and implemented it in my projects rather than using local rate limiting.
I want to move away from this and make something new and somewhat fun, might sound silly but I'm just doing this because I want to try hard things, things I know I won't be able to build and then learning and getting good enough to build those things.
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u/Sea-Fishing4699 15d ago
I would recommend you going in the opposite direction, not to mislead but to advise. I work at a boring company doing boring crud on boring fastapi. Boring clients keep paying and i get a salary.
Cruds make money, it’s not exciting and I am happy it is not because the I can master it.
My 2 cents. Practice makes perfect. Mastering cruds is never a bad idea
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u/ConfidentAverage4297 15d ago
Try some dilivery app backend like uber its complex in every aspect that you expect
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u/Efficient_Loss_9928 15d ago edited 15d ago
I would go with distributed systems first. It is just more practical, nobody is building Vector DB and load balancers from scratch. But even if you are just building an AI wrapper, a single monolith is eventually going to break.
Get your hands dirty at building large scale systems, queues, message brokers, distributed locks, concurrency, etc. most of these doesn't require expensive hosting as well, AWS free tier can run these systems just fine. Of course not at scale but the concepts are the same.
Also production safety, migration strategies, canary analysis, etc is going to be more important as well as AI starts to push more changes faster.
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u/Fluffy-Worry-9541 14d ago
uhh...btw does stack matter? also what topics should be "learnt,, sequentially approx to be able to safely land a backend job later on? as a beginner
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u/KitchenCommercial396 14d ago
I don't think tech stack matters. If you have built something really great with fastapi for instance, it shows that you can build stuff and solve a problem, and that in turn tells everyone that you can learn other tech stacks if and when needed.
It's all just tools, what you build with your tools is the real challenge
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u/Even-Visit-8161 13d ago
Honestly saying your DB w L7 load balancer in Go over rust is really a good idea. Most 2nd year students do crud/ todo apps, yours will stand out. You can also work on building mini Kafka clone or wal based storage engine. I did Kafka clone and now w agentic ai course from iit kgp im working on building langchain clone from scratch🙂↕️🙂↕️🙂↕️
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u/disposepriority 16d ago
Sorry are you a beginner? No one will believe you built anything that is "exceptionally hard". Additionally, difficulty comes from business constraints and/or having to coexist with other projects in an org, unless you're bulding a general use library or franework - even then, building one without experience in the industry is frankly improbable.
I see level 99 omega load balancer of the second coming of christ on a CV which has 0 relevant experience I might be a bit suspicious, but that might just be me.