Please consider framing your project in your mind as a hobby. It’s valuable to the degree that you enjoy it. Learning and other external values don’t have to apply here. Just the fun of doing it can be enough.
Ham radio as a whole is a great hobby to sink your random RF projects into already.. its a hobby within a hobby, no matter what path you may take ;)
I'm familiar with the author's past work on ieee.org and have a sense that he likes to write to/for both hobbyist and professional camps:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/u/stephen-cass