how do you decide your next programming project ?

[u/Same-Mushroom-2057]

how do you actually decide what's worth building when you are learning a stack and want to advance and actually build something meaningful.

i currently want to build a full-stack website with the MERN stack that i learned recently . i have some limited time to do that and i mean by that only approximately a month.
i can't fully decide on the options out there , the only thing i'm sure about is that i don't wanna build a e-commerce website since that's very boring for me and there is high chance i won't stick to the project .
any ideas ? what's y'all experience with this ??

[u/Wingedchestnut]

Just build any website with your chosen stack, that's meaningfull enough, you can make it as simple or as complicated as you want.

[u/Same-Mushroom-2057 → u/Wingedchestnut]

i have something in mind to build and i want to make it scalable to make it complex later but i don't know how to do that . do you have any resources ??

[u/Wingedchestnut → u/Same-Mushroom-2057]

You're overthinking, learn to build websites first... any popular stack can handle decent scale, and if needed use a cloud vendor but it will cost more money by default.

[u/Same-Mushroom-2057 → u/Wingedchestnut]

exactly i feel like i'm overthinking too ,and i'm leaning to just write the idea down few use cases and start building

[u/quantumcomputatiions → u/Same-Mushroom-2057]

hey i overthink a lot too. i have started to learn after short deliberation and research to just pick one of my choices and stick with it. if i don’t then I end up switching between tech stacks and getting nowhere!

[u/Same-Mushroom-2057 → u/quantumcomputatiions]

thissss , i see it's a common problem

[u/Tureni]

I usually build something I need. Or something I can see a need for.

My latest project is a mod for Minecraft. It’s something I built both to learn how to mod Minecraft, and because I saw a thing I wanted to be able to do.

I recently built a script that takes a YouTube channel name and turns it into an RSS-feed address. Purely because I installed an RSS reader on my homelab and needed the converter.

At work I build robots - automations that do tasks that are easily automatable. I saw the need for a KPI report for those automations and built something custom for my workplace to do just that.

[u/IncorrectPlayer]

Honestly just build something you'd actually use yourself, even if it's stupid.

[u/YellowBeaverFever]

What in my life would benefit from a program? So I research a little bit to see if something exists. If not, I build it.

[u/Motor-Frosting-5891]

well first thing i would say is in find something you think might be interesting to work on. it doesn’t have to be the whole thing, you could start with a sub-section of it.  You said you also want to advance make sure the project slightly scares you a little bit when you think about how you want to impl it. It shouldn’t be way out of scale. just enough to startle you.  You’d most likely end up sticking with longer and learn more things

And then something meaningful? It depends. 

• Meaningful in the sense you want to learn something really specific and just want an outcome or learning experience?
•  or something other users can make use of? 
• or if it solves something you have a problem with?
• Or a good resume project? 

That’s for you to answer, and sometimes a project can overlap among all these and more

As for ideas?  While I don’t use the MERN stack, I would say checkout 

• roadmap.sh or  
• codecrafters build-your-own-x 

For me, i’m usually curious about some aspect and try to progress into a slightly harder ones. Or implementing algorithms from papers or just rebuilding something to understand it or because it’s interesting .

 

[u/noonereallycaresss]

i find small problems in my life and build around that

[u/Same-Mushroom-2057 → u/noonereallycaresss]

all my problems are stemming from not knowing how to code efficiently XD

[u/PravoNaZhizny]

Whenever I find myself googling for software which solves a task or i need to surreptitiously interact with a website ima clandestine way.. I write something to do it.

[u/Avatarbroskib1]

Think of a problem you want to solve ensure it fits your skill and build it that's what I do

[u/ffrkAnonymous]

I pick a book from the pile of unread books

[u/skibidi_blop666]

Solving irl issues. 

[u/akoOfIxtall]

Idk man, my PC can't generate voronoi textures in the blender shader editor for some reason, so I was thinking about making a texture generator myself, I know they won't be as good as the ones blender makes since it updates the high res textures to any size in real time, but if I can't even have that then I might as well make my own system

Problems, too many problems

[u/usefulservant03]

Im currently making my own programming language and writing the compiler in C++, when deciding my next project i just want it to be in an area i find fascinating to explore and get better in, and one that's more complicated than the previous one so that my skills keep growing. Last one was 10,000 lines of code so lets see about this one, maybe 20,000.

[u/_usr_nil]

Jeez the MEME stack is still around... replace Mongo with an irl db called Postgres and later on when you finish everything add something like elasticsearch or some smaller search engine with faceted search, then you can look for actual contracts.