#CodingProjects #ProgrammingJourney #TechConfidence
🚀 What project made you feel like you really “get” coding? 🤔
As a beginner in the world of coding, it is completely normal to feel a bit overwhelmed and unsure of your skills. However, the key to boosting your confidence and truly feeling like you “get” coding is to work on projects that challenge you and allow you to apply what you have learned. Below are some examples of coding projects that can help you enhance your skills and make you feel like a real programmer:
## Building a Personal Portfolio Website
One of the best ways to showcase your coding skills and creativity is by creating your own personal portfolio website. This project will not only help you practice your coding skills but also allow you to express your unique style and personality. Here are some key steps to consider when building your personal portfolio website:
1. Choose a domain name and hosting service
2. Design the layout and user interface of your website
3. Code the front-end using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
4. Implement interactive elements such as animations or contact forms
5. Optimize your website for mobile responsiveness
6. Publish your website and share it with potential employers or clients
## Developing a To-Do List App
A to-do list app is a classic coding project that is perfect for beginners looking to enhance their programming skills. This project will help you practice key concepts such as data storage, user input, and event handling. Here are some steps to consider when developing a to-do list app:
1. Design the user interface of the app
2. Create a form for users to input tasks
3. Implement functionality to add, delete, and edit tasks
4. Store task data locally using web storage or remotely using a database
5. Add features such as sorting, filtering, or due dates to enhance user experience
6. Test the app thoroughly to ensure it functions as expected
## Contributing to Open-Source Projects
Another great way to boost your confidence and improve your coding skills is by contributing to open-source projects. By collaborating with other developers and working on real-world projects, you can gain valuable experience and feedback while making a positive impact on the coding community. Here are some tips for getting started with open-source contributions:
1. Choose a project that interests you and aligns with your skills
2. Familiarize yourself with the project’s guidelines and coding standards
3. Browse the project’s issue tracker to find tasks or bugs to work on
4. Fork the project, make your changes, and submit a pull request for review
5. Communicate with other contributors and maintainers to gather feedback
6. Continuously improve your coding skills and expand your contributions to new projects
In conclusion, the key to feeling like you “get” coding is by working on projects that challenge you, inspire you, and allow you to apply your skills in practical ways. Whether you decide to build a personal portfolio website, develop a to-do list app, or contribute to open-source projects, the experience gained from these projects will undoubtedly boost your confidence and enhance your programming abilities. So roll up your sleeves, get coding, and watch your skills soar to new heights! 🚀💻
Remember, practice makes perfect, and the more you code, the more confident you will become in your abilities. Happy coding! 🌟👩💻👨💻
Make a computer game; when people play it and say they liked it, that’s a pretty nice confidence boost 😛
I would say any project that people use and that requires changes.
When you have some real customers with their needs and complaints, you understand that the code is a product. When you have to change it, evolve it and, thus, you feel the pain, you understand that the code is a responsibility.
My current job. It’s my first time as the lead and there’s a lot more responsibility. You not only have to take a task that’s assigned and complete it, you have to understand the product, the users of your product, the domain in which your product resides, the business goals for the product, and you have to use all of that information along with your technical knowledge to build a plan and coordinate a team.
It’s no longer about “I understand how to program and I can write code”, it’s about “I understand how to program and can shape and guide a product from meeting, to story, to task, to release and actually put something in the user’s hands”
The first time I had a full and complete program that completed a full task.
That would have been back in my early days making a runescape bot/script. That’s probably not when I got it, but it’s the first time I felt like I got it.
When I think I actually got it, was when I started looking at other people’s programs (still runescape automation scripts) and was able to critique them and find valuable feedback to them to improve.
I think even at a most basic level we all understand what *we* are doing, but the real skill is to be able to understand what someone *else* is doing.
i suggest make
1)bank system management
2)car rental system
3)snake game
4)tank game
after this take feedback from your monitor: collegedoctor, friend
to improve your project and solve problems you will face
wish you will have good time
Writing a client for IRC, VNC, IMAP, or other standard protocol. It feels great when your code can successfully hold a conversation with systems written by Real Programmers.
I made a chrome extension that automated several repetitive tasks as my first “real” project which is now in use at my workplace. It’s not great by any means but it gave me a leg to stand on in understanding.
I’m now working on a ticketing system, and this project has been challenging so far and I haven’t even gotten to databases in it yet, but I now feel way more confident in what I’m doing.
The most important thing for me is making something that solves a problem or is otherwise useful or fun
Me and a friend made guess who in Java. We have it on GitHub our code is outrageous but it works.
The first time I got a partnership offer and a buyout offer for software I wrote.
I wound up ultimately making a separate offer to another engineer with 30+ YoE experience who has done work for many major companies and governments. He accepted and now we’re getting ready to release our product in the next few months. We’re just coordinating our trademarks, patents, and the licenses/agreements for the software with law firms now prior to release.
understand how a command is compiled, assembled etc and run, down to the logic level
I’ve been doing this for 17 years, and the longer I do it, the more I realize I don’t get it.
That’s what makes it so fun.
A simple raytracer – believe me, the algorithm is the simplest thing in the world, yet the results and satisfaction are immediate!
It’s the little tools I make that just make my life easier like a password creator. A random thing that I made to clean data. Comfortably being able to debug my stuff.
E-commerce website. It has a good mix of various programming concepts that will be useful for real world projects.
Converting words to formulas and vice versa for my sophomore chemistry class.
What? Is that a thing? Hahah
Two levels:
As a nerdy teen, I made a bad Donkey Kong clone. A little guy jumping along on platforms. Got a game loop going, and how to detect simple collisions. Other kids played it and we wrote down high scores on a bit of paper. I made a thing, and someone liked the thing.
As an adult fresh out of Uni, my first paid for program calculated the time error for a gadget needing precise time… before GPSs became common… and people used it and liked it and it saved them work.
So… making something that does something that people find useful or fun, I guess.
More specific domain:
I like and understand games (game history, game dev, playing games).
When I worked on my first commercial game, not a hobby game, I noticed that I understand pretty much everything.
Games are a wide field just like web dev: There’s C++ code (and Python on my first project), a few graphics driver and media access issues, game code (game AI, physics, spawning things, and so on), profiling on a specific hardware (PS2 back then), and so on.
In a nutshell: What came together was C++ programming knowledge, a bit of CS knowledge (algorithms, data structures, hardware stuff like memory access/cache), general problem-solving knowledge, and game dev domain knowledge.
So far for 20 years I couldn’t stop to work in games and game tech… it was smooth sailing more or less (if I ignore a few hectic moments and crunch time).
I’ve been working for years and still feel like I don’t get coding 😛
There wasn’t any singular moment for me. I just find that my understanding of particular concepts gets bolstered with each new project. Been programming for about 4 years and still have a lot to learn, but it’s fun.
This might be an offbeat answer because you might be looking to progress toward enterprise software but..
nand2tetris. I’m only a third of the way through but already it has shown me, and has you “build” the logic of a small, specified computer. It’s made me understand just how instruction codes can work in such a matter-of-fact way
i created a CLI to create routines for my school with adequate breaks and stuff when i started coding, teachers were impressed
I built a social media app over the course of around 6 months and it helped me more than anything, super fun too if it’s an idea you like.
I made a quick program that helps me automate a portion of a monthly task at work. I have made dumb little tools here and there but this one was the first that actually felt like it did something worth spending the time to program/automate.
Intro to Operating Systems (multi-threaded coding) projects like creating a pager, disk scheduler, and implementing cpu interrupts. Learning about threading, locks, semaphores, pager, disk, cpu interrupts and more.
If somebody does a cs program, intro to operating systems ties a lot of earlier classes in a beautiful way. Plus you understand coding being closer to the machine
Make a simple turn based game. Then do a monte carlo simulation and analyze different strategies. Then do machine learning on the game to see if it can perform as well as your analysis.
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Starting with games is great because you can build off of them and do other fields like data science.
I feel kind of ridiculous because I said this earlier today or maybe yesterday, but Nand2tetris. If anything teaches you about computers and coding a computer is doing, its that. Just the first two modules made so many connections in my brain regarding the crappy python and javascript code I was writing before. It’s a good one.
I was a sophomore in high school. I had the hots for a guy that wanted to calculate PI to the 200Kth digit. We had a Vax with 16K of core shared amongst dozens of programmers.
First note, as a highschool student, they did not charge me for page faults.
So 16 digit floating point was out as, how could you use that. So I remembered the nuns teaching us ‘long division’. It used integer math and remainders to do floating point division. I coded it (FORTRAN was my language at the time–C was quite experimental at the time).
I used random access files writing back results and carryovers with the Taylor Series for PI.
It took like 3 weeks to run (again, I am glad we did not have to pay) and printed out PI. Our chemistry teacher did a random digit check to make sure it was right and then put the printout around his room.
The idea that we could create something out of whole cloth, using techniques taught to me as a 3rd grader and did not have to pay for it.. I was sold.
Making a sodoku generator and solver and a searching for especially hard ones
What did you do, watch, or read for you to have the fundamentals down? I’m pretty much stuck on how I can get the fundamentals down in general.
My hs comp sci teacher assigned us a project to code the game craps (yes the one where you roll dice and throw money around). After coding that to including betting, I was very confident in my oop skills!
And craps became my go to game in Vegas!
Http server with a simple API and a JavaScript website that uses the API to display something.
Each piece is simple, but getting them to play nicely together can be a challenge.
It is a simple full-stack dev challenge, and will give you confidence that you can handle any layer of the stack.
Gives a big picture perspective.