As an instructor I often find myself answering a lot of the same questions. 1 being is there anything else that I should be doing besides the assignments? My answer is almost always the same answer. Yes….with in reason. While they are in school or the boot camp then to a point yes their focus should be on assignments however, the more you practice the better and more comfortable with the material you will get. So just what is the MORE that they should be doing? Well there is a lot they can do. I am certainly not suggesting they build a full stack application while they are still learning the fundamentals of Web Development, but there is a whole lot they can do in terms of projects with just HTML and CSS alone. Throw in some basic JS or jQuery functions then you can do a whole lot more. You can get pretty creative. In fact over the last 2 weeks that is what I was doing. Taking a break from some errors that I was getting in a React framework application and built or started the framework to 2 new projects that are just the basics. 
This one as most of those I am going to show you are works in progress. This is going to be my very own version of a bootstrap type library. Right now the CSS link is up and available to use, but I am going to keep adding to it, or more importantly I need to add the documentation for it. It won’t be usefull to anyone if they only have the code to work with, but have documentation to look through to find the class names they will use to get the styling they want. There will be a JS link as well for certain things that I will build into it. It was a lot of fun build or at least start it. The idea came from noticing a pattern in how I use certain styles all the time. Will anyone but me ever use this? Who knows. Does it matter if I am the only one that ever uses it? Nope not at all. It is keeping my skills sharp and gettnig me to think outside the box…like what styling would others use….or how should I name this class so that it makes sence to others. The image has the link however here is the link to this site as it is currently deployed via github pages . 
This site also linked through the images and deployed via github pages I am rather quite proud of. This too will be a work in progress for quite some time I think. It is going to be a site that takes some of the aspects of Web Development that can be difficult to understand and put a visual aspect to it. When I teach I use a lot of analogies as it is…this site is basically taking my analogies and puting them to pictures and out in the world. I am quite proud of how this is turning out so far. I hope that others will find it and use it as I think it could be helpful. Does it matter if no one does? Not really, this one might hurt a little if it doesn’t get used since I am quite proud of it, but at the same time, it does show myself that I do know what I am talking about. That if I can put some skills to pictures then I really do know what I am doing. You know put that whole Imposter syndrome feeling to rest. 
I built this guy a few months ago also linked through the image and deployed via github pages as well. This one is my very own Lorem Ipsum generator. I have links to other generators as well, and even have a link on the main page that if someone else has anything they might like to add to it they can. This one is also open source and available to be worked on through Hackathons like Hacktoberfest. This one took a little more work than the other 2 and I have plans for this to also graduate to a npm package maybe even a pip package. Thats something that is years away but still an idea.
So should you build side projects? My answer is a resounding YES! Should you do it while you are still learning? I am going to say not quite as loudly but still yes. All 3 of these were build using HTML, CSS, and JS nothing more than that. But it goes to show that even those 3 beginner skills can be used to make pretty cool things….that can one day become bigger or just be helpful.