Database Engine Creation using Go.

[Rishikesh Raj]

"I want to build a low-level project for my resume. An LLM suggested creating a database engine in Go, but I’m unsure how to approach it. Should I pursue this project, or focus on something else? If I do build it, what would be the practical use case?"

[Jason E. Aten]

Michael Stonebraker (won the Turing award in 2014) pointed out that databases are like a Tardis. Well,

that's my analogy, not his. The point is: they are alot bigger on the inside. There's a ton of stuff to tackle,

and they hit every area of computer science, even though they seem kind of simple from the outside.

For personal projects, it pays better to be a little selfish write something you yourself want. 

Since you are the user, you will give yourself much better feedback. If you don't know the use case,

you can't be the user, and that's a sign that your project has little hope of being useful.

This is the same advice that Paul Graham gives for problem selection; that writers are given

when they hear, "write what you know".

So ask yourself, "what software do I want?"

[Haddock]

h2 is a relational database written in Java that is open source: https://h2database.com. You can have a look at the sources. You will probably see that it would be a major effort and will take too lang till usable for your resume.

[Dan Kegel]

That reminds me of https://build-your-own.org/database/ which looks pretty cool and fun.

But likely it's not something you'd do for any practical use case.

LLMs may not be the best mentors here :-) 

Asking an llm something like

"what's a good low-level project in golang that I could complete in a month and that has practical applications?"

might pull up better ideas.

- Dan

[Gökhan Özeloğlu]

I support developing a database engine as a side and low-level project. However, it's not easy to develop from scratch since there are many different concepts that you should learn. It can be a good practice to learn the internals of the databases, but it'll take some time. Maybe you can follow the link that Dan shared. If you have a passion to learn internals, firstly, and develop some engines after that, you can start today. But if you want to build something in a short time, you may go with a simpler project. In that way, you can enhance your resume in a shorter time.

15 Temmuz 2026 Çarşamba tarihinde saat 20:03:55 UTC+3 itibarıyla Dan Kegel şunları yazdı: