It doesn't take a lot to impress me. All you have to do is show me something that I didn't think about, or do something that I consider difficult and valuable. If it is just difficult, it is not really interesting, and if it is valuable but obvious, it is not really impressive. If it is not valuable, there is no point in spending any time on it.

It seems like common sense, to me. But I had four different occasions recently where I was shown things where I got the strong impression that I was supposed to be impressed. I wasn't. I really wasn't, in a few cases.

In two cases, it was doing things in the really hard way, and I was able to point out easier ways to approach the problem. One was just not interesting to me and in the case of the last two, I kept asking, "and... ?", trying to figure out exactly why I was supposed to be impressed. Both were a duplication of existing work, and I couldn't figure out what new there.

Oh, there were new things, but none of them was something that couldn't be built in less than a day or two. So they didn't pass the difficult bar.

If you want people to be impressed, you have better do something impressive. Sorry, but I have hard time of getting excited of Yet Another Xyz or Overcomplicated Solution Abc.