At 14–15, fresh off watching The Social Network, I wanted to take Zuckerberg’s Facemash idea and do my own version for my school campus. So I built it — the kind of half-provocation a teenager talks themselves into because the engineering is the fun part.
I finished it and then chose not to release it. Looking back, that’s the part I’m glad about: the build taught me what I wanted to learn, and not shipping it taught me something the code couldn’t — that “can I build this?” and “should this exist?” are different questions, and the second one is the one that actually matters.