There’s something embarrassing that I need to admit. I don’t have a portfolio. It’s not that I have just a sparse one, nor an outdated one. I mean a proper, intentional, here’s what I can do portfolio. I’ve worked to convince myself that I either didn’t need one, or didn’t have the right projects to share. Maybe I didn’t have time to really devote to the task. Ultimately, though, the real reason was that starting felt like walking into a room full of people who had been there for years and announcing my presence. Kind of terrifying, really. Maybe you know that feeling, too.
Apples to Oranges
I never really like perusing GitHub profiles or reading “how I got my first dev job” posts. The protagonists always seem to have started coding at 14, shipped their first app at 19, and by the time they were job-hunting they had multiple open source contributions and side projects with actual users. I never had any of that, and for a long time, I felt like I’d already lost a race I hadn’t even bothered to enter.
I don’t think that kind of story is the norm. I think there’s a selecion bias toward people with that background, and a lot of us are still out here trying to figure it all out. So, why am I trying to compare myself to all the other people out there? Are my experiences somehow less worthy of sharing? No. Well, I don’t think so, anyway.
So let’s agree to stop doing that.
Late? Really?
What even is late? I’ll let you in on a secret. At the time I’m writing this, I’m 49 years old and have been a software developer and lover of all things technological for decades. Is it too late to start recording what I’m doing and what I’ve learned? Is it worth putting out there where someone else can benefit?
What a late start actually gives you, if you let it, is perspective. You’ve lived more, and you’ve worked in different contexts. You understand things about people, processes, and real-world constraints that a 22-year-old often doesn’t. That’s not nothing.
Ideally, I would have 20 years of my experiences on a blog or portfolio site, showing what I know and where I’ve been. The best time to have started was back then. The second best time is now.
So, Where Am I?
I’m not going to pretend to know what I’m doing. I’m trying to build a portfolio, alongside this blog. Here’s my plan, and maybe this can help others in the same situation.
Start with a signle project, not a plan for six. The instinct when you’re behind is to compensate by doing a lot, fast. That’s a trap, especially if, like me, you tend to leave things half-finished. So, I’m going with one small, complete, polished project rather than 5 unfinished and abandoned ones.
Pick something real, not something impressive. The best first portfolio project is something you actually wanted to build, even if it’s modest. I have a couple of things to publish, including a TUI photo organizer app that I wrote to help with clean up my photos and to learn Go (and Charm libraries). Whatever you show doesn’t need to be world beating, but it needs to be done to some degree, and visible.
Document as you go. Write a README and add comments. Keep a short log of decisions and why you made them. This turns a project into evidence of how you think — which is ultimately what a portfolio is for.
Don’t wait until it’s perfect to put it somewhere. GitHub, a simple personal site, a public Notion page — somewhere. The act of making it visible is part of the work. I have this GitHub pages site, and my repositories to link to.
The Part I Don’t Talk About Much
I have ADHD. I’m mentioning it here because it’s relevant, and because I suspect some of you reading this do too. Half-finished projects aren’t laziness, they’re a symptom. The dopamine hit of starting something new is real, and the friction of returning to something already in progress is equally real. I’ve started probably a dozen portfolio projects over the years that never went anywhere.
What’s different now isn’t that I fixed my brain. It’s that I’ve stopped trying to use willpower to overpower the pattern and started working around it. Smaller scope, public commitment, and fewer active projects at a time, with everything else explicitly parked makes it easier to feel like I’m accomplishing something. If this is you too, I want you to know that the portfolio you build doesn’t have to reflect years of consistent output. It just has to reflect what you can do. One project, done, is a start. That’s all it needs to be.
Right Now
Ok, so I started this by saying I don’t have a portfolio, and I guess that’s no longer true. I have the beginnings of one. I don’t have a tidy ending for this post because I don’t have a tidy ending for this story yet. What I do have is a portfolio project in progress, a commitment to finish it, and a growing conviction that the best time to start was ten years ago and the second best time is right now.
If you’re in the same place, I hope this helps even a little. Not because I have the answers, but because sometimes it helps to know someone else is figuring it out at the same time.