Portfolios age in public

Portfolios age in public.

That is the annoying part of having a personal site. Old work keeps talking after the context disappears. A screenshot may freeze a UI you would not ship now. A paragraph may describe a role in the vocabulary you used before you learned better words. A demo may be broken because the API moved. A link may point at a service that is no longer there. None of that means the work was fake. It means the artifact is aging.

the honest version

If a project was a prototype, say that. If it was a class assignment, say that. If it was an early-career piece that still shows something useful, say that too. Context makes old work fairer, not smaller.

the uncomfortable part

Deletion is still part of maintenance.

I do not think a portfolio should keep every old thing just because it took effort. Some work belongs in an archive. Some work should get a note. Some work should be removed because it no longer represents judgment. The important question is not “am I still proud of this?” It is “does this still help the site tell the truth?”

Broken demos are the easiest call. A broken demo is worse than no demo because it asks the reader to do guesswork. Either fix it, replace it with a still image or video, or archive it with a note that explains why it stayed.

The same rule applies to writing. Some posts are historical. Some should be updated. Some should be linked forward because the conclusion changed. The worst state is a piece that sounds timeless but was really a reaction to one narrow moment.

I think of the whole thing as scheduled pruning. Once in a while, review the front page, the resume links, the case studies, the screenshots, the dead links, and the claims that need dates. That keeps stale artifacts from speaking louder than current work. The archive can be honest. It just should not be loud for the wrong reasons.