Excactly right. It's your job as a developer to always have some just-for-fun apps going where you test out new tools and techniques. How else can you suggest

Excactly right. It's your job as a developer to always have some just-for-fun apps going where you test out new tools and techniques. How else can you suggest anything useful when the next project starts? To do otherwise is to always stay status quo on architecture or to pick new technologies at random.