a project can be something you always wanted to see, or some application that already exists (build your own version from scratch)

the key is that it is big and related/applied to something you like, such as a hobby

my first was a stock picking system (fool's errand), my PhD work was a system to extract math formula from data, post PhD was a deterministic code generation engine (pre-dating LLM code gen)

unfamiliar with the DSA acronym

Ah, I see what you mean now. By DSA, I mean Data Structures and Algorithms.

So basically, you recommend choosing something I’m genuinely interested in, even if a similar application already exists, and building my own version from scratch. Then whenever I encounter something I don’t know, I learn it as I go.