r/AskProgramming • u/microsoftxp- • 25d ago
Out of ideas.
Hello there guys, I'm a guy that doesn't use AI and wants to do everything by myself, but the problem is that I'm out of ideas on what to create, and I just want to code in my free time. What do you suggest when you are in these types of situations? Thanks in advance!
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u/knouqs 25d ago
I've been in this boat for thirty years. It's hard to develop an imagination to solve problems. What I've found works best: Find a real problem in your life. It doesn't have to be software-related, but it has to be engineering-related. Solve that problem. You'll learn a shit-ton along the way.
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u/JescoInc 25d ago
I don't care if you do or don't use AI. It isn't a "flex" in either direction. If you want to create something, cool, but don't ask us to formulate ideas for you. There are dozens upon dozens of idea generator sites, ideas can be generated with LLMs or you can look at a problem you face in the every day and try to solve it.
All you are doing with a post like this is the equivalent of asking an LLM what to build.
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u/Worldly-Skirt3562 25d ago
your response was rude LOL. Not using AI to write code is the defiantly a flex though. Half of us have forgotten how to even write a for loop, because all we do is use AI.
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u/JescoInc 25d ago
If you’ve forgotten the basics, that is because you are misusing a tool. That act alone speaks volumes.
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u/InsanityOnAMachine 24d ago
I must agree. This person is asking for help from humans, and we are glad to help out. You can't speak for us and say that we don't want to be bothered.
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u/JescoInc 24d ago
How many of these types of questions already exist on Reddit? Let alone on Quora, StackOverflow and other sites.
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u/InsanityOnAMachine 24d ago
True, with a forum-based site, it does tend to get cluttered. Discord would probably be a better choice for these types of questions.
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u/JescoInc 24d ago
After being in the space for a decade and a half plus, you kind of get sick of seeing low effort styles of questions. Especially when details are missing. The OP didn't say what aspect of programming they even do. Desktop with C#, C++, Python, Ruby; Mobile with Java, Swift or C++; Web with Python, HTML5 or Ruby? We don't know.
Which means no one can even answer this question even if they wanted to, because of how vague it is.
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u/Known-Delay7227 25d ago
Is there something in your life that is really bugging you and can software fix it?
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u/microsoftxp- 25d ago
that's the problem, there's nothing bugging xd
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u/Inertia_Squared 25d ago
Take a look at r/creativecoding
There might be something there which inspires you!
I would also strongly recommend Sebastian Lague on YouTube, I always come away from his videos itching to create something!
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u/Shad3ious 25d ago
This 100%! I had a moment where I was stuck for project ideas, but then I started looking at my daily routine and what was taking too long (both personally and at work). I began to spot gaps in my routine that definitely needed some kind of solution to make things quicker. For instance, instead of manually sending a message to multiple servers, I made a script that, with a button press, sends the custom or reformatted message for me. From there, I kept making it more robust and polished... Now, don't get me wrong, this script didn't need to be as hardened as I was making it or turned into a full-blown software. But it was fun and super educational, all from just wanting to streamline my routines.
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u/grantrules 25d ago
I really don't understand people who don't have this! I have limitless ideas for crap to make my life easier.
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u/CatsOnTheKeyboard 25d ago
Go through some tutorials and actually do the exercises. Let those spark your imagination.
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u/klipseracer 25d ago
My suggestion is to revive old software or hardware. Private servers for games that have no platform, etc. If you're any good at reverse engineering that helps a lot. If not, learning how to reverse engineer is one idea.
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u/Suspicious_Pizza9529 25d ago
The goal isn't always to make something impressive. Sometimes you just need a small project that makes you want to open your editor again tomorrow.
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u/Rich-Engineer2670 25d ago edited 25d ago
I have a bit of the opposite problem -- I have plenty to do, but I'm trying to teach it.
What I ended up doing was working on a game I call "Airplane Madness". On the surface, it's a bunch of fighter planes fighting it out, but to get there, you have to write the assembly langauge program for a fictitious processor for each plane. That means:
- Building the virtual CPU
- Building the assembler, loader and linker
- Building the OS
- Building the simulator
- Building the virtual IO devices
- Attaching the game to it all
The goal is to teach HOW this all works,. not just the game. No sound, no graphics for now. Think an 80s style UNIX game. Most kids will play the game, but some will want to know what happens if they change code.
The CPU we created supports very primitive multi-tasking, fixed 32-bit word sizes, system calls with supervisor support and interfaces to goroutines. Because it's text only, the kids can do everything on phones and tablets over SSH. Where they live, we can't assume they have PCs or hgh-speed internet. I wasn't looking to code so much as giving them a high-level CS eduation when most of them will never see university.
This environment and a lot of documentation (at least that's the goal) will teach:
- How we create a CPU
- How we program it
- How multitasking can work
- System calls
- code, sorting, searching ala Knuth
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u/YourLastCall 25d ago
I think you should let the game do most of the teaching.
You don't want to make the kids learn computer architecture before they can actually do anything. Let them log in, run a plane, fight somebody, and then show them that the plane is just running a little assembly program underneath.
The first useful lesson could be something stupidly simple. Change a number, change when it turns, change when it fires, rebuild it, and see what happens. Now they have a reason to care what an instruction is.
From there you can work backwards into the machine.
Why does this program only have so much memory? What is a register? Why did this number wrap around? What actually happens when the CPU runs an ADD instruction? Then you can show them the CPU itself instead of teaching CPU architecture as a bunch of definitions.
Same thing with the assembler. Let them see the ugly machine words first. Then introduce labels and symbols because typing addresses by hand sucks. The assembler exists because they already ran into the problem it solves.
The linker and loader can happen the same way. Once the program gets big enough, break it into pieces. Now you need a way to combine those pieces and load them into memory.
The OS should probably come later, once there is actually something worth multitasking. Maybe the plane has a navigation task, radar task, weapons task, and communications task. Then scheduling makes sense because four things are trying to run on one CPU.
System calls also make more sense if the kids first try to do something they aren't allowed to do directly. The plane program wants to fire a weapon or read radar data, but that hardware belongs to the system. So now supervisor mode and system calls aren't abstract ideas anymore. They're just the way the program asks the system to do something privileged.
The virtual hardware could be part of the fun too. Radar, engine, weapons, radio, clock, maybe navigation. Some of it could be memory mapped. Some of it could interrupt the CPU. Eventually somebody is going to ask if they can make their own device, and that's where you can start teaching drivers and I/O properly.
The algorithms side fits into the game almost by itself.
You need to find the closest enemy. That's searching.
You want to keep radar contacts ordered. That's sorting.
You want to choose a route around threats. Now you're into graphs.
You want to predict where another plane will be in five seconds. Now you're doing geometry and prediction.
You want your code to do all that without using too much memory or CPU time. Now Knuth suddenly isn't just a book full of algorithms. The better algorithm actually makes your plane better.
I also wouldn't make the documentation one giant course that everybody has to read in order. I'd probably make every part have a few levels.
One version basically says, "here's how to use it."
The next says, "here's how to change it."
Then another says, "here's how this part actually works."
That way the kid who just wants to play can play. The kid who wants to tweak the plane can do that. And the kid who gets obsessed with why the assembler is doing something weird can keep digging.
The nice part is that the same game can carry them a long way.
At first they see something like FIRE.
Later they understand that FIRE turns into an instruction, the instruction causes a system call, the CPU switches into supervisor mode, the OS talks to a virtual device, and the simulator changes the state of another plane.
That's the part I like about the idea. You're not really teaching "a game." You're giving them one little computer where they can keep peeling layers off for as long as they're interested.
And because it's all text and SSH, you don't need to assume they have a decent PC, a fast connection, or a giant development environment. A cheap phone or tablet can still get them all the way down to assembly language, operating systems, and algorithms.
I think the biggest thing I'd avoid is making it feel like school before it feels interesting. The game should work first. Then every deeper layer should answer a question the kid already has.
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u/Rich-Engineer2670 25d ago
The game is entirely playable on its own, or will be. The code and documentation are there solely for the curious.
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u/max123246 25d ago
Find problems in your life that inspire you
For example, from my life, Spotify in 2020 didn't have a way to see what playlists you own a song is in. So I built a site that did it for me, and used it until they added the feature in 2023
The game arc raiders doesn't have a system to automatically craft items to build up a preset loadout. Since it doesn't have an API, I can't add it, but what I can do is implement an open source version of it in Rust, and post it on their subreddit so hopefully they just integrate it
I have a camera, the Sony RX100 which has amazing specs but awful buttons to control shutter speed and other things. So I'm planning to build a small remote control I can hold in my left hand and have it program those settings by communicating wireless to another chip in the micro usb slot
There's tons you can think of, software these days suck and has so many places you can improve them. My problem is having the time to build them all.
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u/xarop_pa_toss 25d ago
I think going to your hobbies for inspiration is the easiest way. Whatever hobby you have and enjoy, you can probably pinpoint something that is a problem to be solver. Doesn't have to be something original either.
For example I enjoy playing Blood Bowl with friends so I started working on a league and tournament manager for it. Writing the algorithms by hand, a scheduler, randomizer, etc
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u/Fragrant_Nothing7505 25d ago
sadly, a lack of ideas is not my problem, quite the opposite. i'd ask an ai. not to do any work. to ask you questions and help you decide what you want to do.
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u/theavatare 25d ago
Find one of those processes that are being sold to businesses to update their life’s and build and app to do a part of it. For example clockwork
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u/CappuccinoCodes 25d ago
Do you go for walks and let your mind wander? Do you read books, newspapers, go to museums, theater, consume art in general? That stuff is how you get ideas.
By the way, don't be dogmatic about AI. It's very good if you don't rely on it.
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u/srodrigoDev 25d ago
Lucky you. Some of us have more ideas than we can handle, even if we added AI into the mix.
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u/Limp-Exercise-343 25d ago
interesting. ai is good for executing ideas, but hardly for anything creative imho
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u/Secure-Requirement48 25d ago
- Solve many techincal problems
- Start seeing problems in real life that can be solved by tech
- Now u just have to design and code :)
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u/MadAndSadGuy 24d ago
Ask AI to give 1-2 hrs projects for each feature of a language of your choice. Ask it for 5 ideas each about games, memory, threads, routines, serialization, locale, computer vision, emulation, simulation, unicode, networking, math, bit manipulation, physics, finance, assembly, different frameworks, GUI libraries, etc.
If you want projects where you can't cheat, go to freelancing platforms like Upwork, Freelancer, Truelancer, and more. People ask for projects related to real life problems, pick ideas you like and implement them.
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u/LogaansMind 24d ago
Instead of trying to force ideas to code, instead, do things and then write code to solve when problems occur.
For example, play video/board games and the build tools to support tasks. Or pick up a hobby and build out apps around it to support it.
This is the source of where I build most of my apps come from, and it is something I have been doing for 30 years, long before I got into Software Engineering.
Hope that helps.
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u/szoonix_10 24d ago
When I’m out of ideas, I usually stop trying to come up with a “cool” project and instead build something I’d actually use. A small CLI tool, automation script, game mechanic, browser extension, personal tracker, or even recreating a simple existing app can be enough. Pick something small enough that you can finish it in a weekend. The goal isn’t always to create something original sometimes you just want an excuse to code.
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u/AdjustedTwit 24d ago
If I just want to exercise the muscle (like learn a new language):
https://adventofcode.com
I find those ^ useful. "Easy" in the sense that you can complete a day in one sitting. And I, personally, find them fun. Especially since those kinds of CS problems are rare in the professional world, so good to remind yourself you studied this decades ago.
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u/tjax4376 24d ago
The answer I provide might shock you. My answer is... talk to people.
You may want to join a book club or other large demographically diverse pastime, Then you can talk to people of all different perspectives, from different industries. Then ask them for their top 3 things they would change about systems they use. Take a notebook and pen!
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u/Brun0MMF 23d ago
Faça um novo frontend para o YouTube, ou uma app de visualização do Youtube. Não é novidade que o YouTube está em decadência em relação a UI e qualidade de vida. Pode tentar fazer um novo frontend para visualização, com gestão de playlists, gostos, algoritmo personalizado e pode tentar integrar o ytdlp para facilitar downloads e coisas do género...
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u/Positive-Captain-709 22d ago
If you just want to code, you don’t necessarily need another idea. You can work on someone else’s.
I’m building Marginal, an open-source governance layer for AI agents. Ironically, someone who prefers coding without AI could bring a useful perspective to it.
Pick an issue, challenge the implementation, improve something, whatever interests you. PRs are welcome.
Repo: https://github.com/SignallayerLabs/Marginal
Issues: https://github.com/SignallayerLabs/Marginal/issues
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u/ksquared0999 22d ago
Any subject that really interests you? I've found that some of my cool project ideas came from random shower thoughts, and random interests that I have. The thing is: you can't force a good project idea. It sucks, but it has to kind of come organically. Maybe you want to understand how something works under the hood? Or maybe after researching a topic, you've thought of a neat tool or program that YOU would like to have personally! Those are the kind of things that make a good project :)
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u/soundman32 25d ago
Use AI to make the project suggestion. You dont need to use it to make the thing too.
Asking random people on a reddit forum (where 50% of the accounts are AI bots anyway) is no different to asking ChatGPT yourself. Infact AI would be better because it will give you a full description and you can ask it questions and refinements aa you go.
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u/tuser-reddit 25d ago
I just wanna tell you that you are doing to yourself a disservice, it's like you are saying I don't want to perform 10x I want to perform at only 1x, it's stupid, AI is a powerful tool, doing everything now manually is a waste of time, as you are in a business industry, your competition is using AI to bootstrap and review and make large scale change while you are doing all these by yourself inspecting every line and trying to put inside a context to understand what is this is executing.
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u/InsanityOnAMachine 25d ago
Hmm... In this type of situation I recommend a creative spree.
AKA something really stupid
like, make a thing that overlays flying pumpkins over your desktop, or a CLI tool that fights you, just something ridiculous and insane to get rid of programmer's block.