Making small tools

Recently I've realized that making tools for personal use is fun. Making small tools for personal use is even more fun, at least for me. But why is that?

It's not like I can't make a more complicated project (even though I probably can't) or that I can't include libraries that are ages ahead of anything that I can make. I think the answer to this lies in that making small tools provide more challenge. Sure, I could just include a bunch of libraries or frameworks that might make the project more robust or whatever, but what will I learn from that?

It's much more challenging in creating what you need, no more no less. Staying within imaginary boundaries that you set for yourself: "Can I finish this within 100kb?" or "What are the chances I can avoid using something made by someone else?" or perhaps "Can I make this method as small and as efficient as possible while staying under 200 lines of code?".

I guess this would also explain why I love Restrictive Art so much, even though I'm no artist myself. There is just something magical about taking a photo, and restricting the palette to, say, 16 colors with dithering enabled.

Granted PHP can't be compiled and has a pretty large overhead to run it, but I tried following these little challenges (albeit not to the letter) in making most of my recent projects including my most recent accomplishment - diary.by (as in this website you are in right now).

To conclude - challenge yourself not with infinite resources but with doing more with less.