The Value of Working on Proof of Concepts as a Developer 🌟
I think one of the best ways to learn, experiment, and grow as a software developer is by working on Proof of Concepts (PoCs). Unlike production projects with tight constraints, PoCs give us the freedom to try new technologies, validate ideas, and push the boundaries of what we know.
I recently wrapped up a PoC at work, and it was an intense but rewarding experience. Here’s a summary of what I gained from it:
🔐 Deepened My Knowledge of Authentication & Authorization – Gained hands-on experience with OAuth2 flows and worked with an authorization system inspired by Google’s Zanzibar, enabling fine-grained permission checks using authorization modeling. This also strengthened my understanding of service-to-service (M2M) authentication, a critical piece in microservices and cloud-native architectures.
🔄 Explored API Proxies & Gateways – Having previously worked with AWS’s API Gateway and Google Cloud’s Apigee, this project helped me dive deeper into these API proxies’ authentication & authorization capabilities.
⚡ FastAPI & Async APIs – Got to develop APIs using FastAPI, appreciating its Pydantic model support and automated API client generation. Looking forward to exploring async API design next!
🔗 Microservices understanding – This PoC gave me a chance to learn more about service decoupling and eventual consistency, key concepts for scalable distributed systems.
📊 More Diagramming & Knowledge Sharing – One unexpected benefit? I got more opportunities to present ideas, diagram solutions, and help colleagues understand these concepts—which, in turn, strengthened my own understanding.
This project helped me achieve my continuous learning goal, and I can’t wait to see it evolve into a fully-fledged product. 🙌
💡 Why Developers Should Work on PoCs? PoCs are an amazing way to learn, test new ideas, and stay ahead of industry trends. They give us the freedom to fail fast, iterate quickly, and build confidence in new technologies. If you ever get the chance to work on one, I highly recommend it!
Have you worked on a PoC recently? Feel free to share your experiences!
Feel free to share your thoughts on this LinkedIn post.