> Can you have a decent, up to date, programming portfolio without investing tons of time in it? Why wouldn't you invest time in it? It's investing in yourself

> Can you have a decent, up to date, programming portfolio without investing tons of time in it? Why wouldn't you invest time in it? It's investing in yourself and could get you your next pay rise. It's not wasted time. We're back to the point I made above about putting the effort in. > Photography is IMO a flawed comparison since it's much easier and less time consuming to have some nice looking photos Sure, as I already said it's not a perfect comparison, it's there to illustrate a point. And I reject your second point very strongly. Even something simple like a single headshot can take hours of planning and setup. Something like a documentary project might take months or even years to complete. Something like a commercial shoot might take a team of 20 a week to complete and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars - how do you get to put that sort of work in your portfolio? Sometimes you work for free, sometimes you create a whole shoot yourself at great cost. You work for it essentially. That's how. And a single photo might be no more the 'whole' than a single file might be the 'whole' programme for instance. Anyway, the exact vagaries of the industry aren't important, it's the assertion that programming is a creative discipline that is important. > More than that, the photos you took in 2010 are likely to still be relevant in 2016, for the average user. However, for programming, your PHP4 project from 2010 might not cut it in 2016 when you're supposed to join a Scala project. Possibly, but a portfolio isn't trying to sell a product it's selling 'you'. Stuff that goes in the portfolio shows how you do what you do, gives a window on how you work, how you approach a problem, how you solve it. Many photographers will create 'behind the scenes' shoots and videos to show how they work and show clients how they solve problems for instance. These can be independent of the exact example and just because a programming language might change you can still use an older project to show your skill and approach to a particular type of problem. Anyway, I've laboured the point long enough, feel free to grab the last word but I think I've outlined my point well enough to be understood.