Building a Search Engine from Scratch: Lessons from Implementing TF-IDF

Over the last month, I’ve been working on a personal project: building a search engine from scratch. This started from a simple curiosity — I’ve always wanted to understand how tools like Google actually work under the hood. At the same time, I wanted to sharpen my backend skills and build something meaningful as I prepare to get back into the job market. The initial idea came from a conversation with AIs about project ideas. From there, I kept expanding it step by step, adding more complexity a