CS Student Builds Three Projects That Each Forced Him to Rethink Core Assumptions

A computer engineering student and developer built three distinct software projects this year, each presenting unexpected design challenges. The first replaced a truck-weighing system at a plant, requiring a serial-port data stream architecture with FastAPI and WebSockets, plus a strict PostgreSQL state machine to prevent edits to completed billing records. The second, a campus social app called Epa, tackled privacy-sensitive features like opt-in expiring location sharing and server-controlled ephemeral media rather than client-side deletion. The third, a PWA music player called BeatWave, exposed the complexity of true offline-first design — managing cache conflicts, interrupted downloads, and partial reconnections via IndexedDB and service workers. Across all three projects, the developer found that the hardest problems were not the obvious technical ones, but the hidden assumptions about data flow, user permissions, and connectivity states.