Ask HN: Where do you get ideas to build side-projects?

I used to struggle with ideas. The initial hurdle wasn't coming up with them, it was recognising that I had them in the first place and then recording them for later. Here's what worked for me:

1. Buy a notebook. A really good quality notebook. You need to like how it looks, how it feels in your hand.

2. Buy a pen. A pen that you love writing with. Pick your colour, decide on whether you want ink/gel/pencil. It needs to be a reliable pen that you love to write with.

3. Carry both with you as often as possible. Look for gaps, problems, optimisations, new uses for existing things, and, finally, anything you see that is really awesome (this one is just as important as the others). Write everything down. Try not to filter/dismiss anything, if it doesn't seem significant now it might 6 months down the track. The goal here is to be mindful of what's around you.

4. Once you have a really good idea (you'll know when it happens) then build it.

Number 1 is the most important step in my opinion. I use fairly cheap pens (that I love) but consistently overpay for notebooks. I tried lots of stuff in the beginning but I needed a 'good' notebook (I think I paid around $25) to get me consistently recording stuff. I think that this was because writing things down almost was a rewarding experience in itself. I suggest avoiding apps (in the beginning at least) for this reason.

There's something about the tactile quality of writing and the flexibility between being able to immediately write, draw or flowchart that technology just can't replicate. On top of that, you're much more likely to remember something when you read it in your own handwriting than when you see it on a screen.

I'm more than confident that you have lots of ideas at the moment, they're just not hanging around long enough to be actionable. That said, if you're still stuck I have a few that you can get started on ;-)

Also, if you just want ideas for side projects rather than a business/startup/plan to save the world, just look for programs with cool features or functions and replicate them. This seems to be a commonly recommended path in visual design and I don't see why it won't get you started. You'll learn a lot and probably start having your own ideas for new stuff along the way.

Hope this helps!

I was afraid that I wouldn't come up with any cool ideas to work on when I first started coding. It can be hard but once you get rid of some of your assumptions, you will see that there are loads of ideas floating around.

Here's what helped me:

1) Do not ever stop reading. Set up a few subscriptions to RSS feeds. Always have a few books that you find interested lying around. You'll see that these books will help you understand that finding an idea for a project is not the hard part.

2) Do not be afraid of inventing the wheel again. Some people say that this is unnecessary but in my experience this has helped me a lot.

Take static site generators for example. There are very good ones around but I still plan to write one. Just for the fun of it. You'll be amazed to see that reinventing the wheel is a great idea to get fresh ideas and improve your coding skills.

3) This has been said a lot, and it's great advice. Try to solve a problem that frustrates you. This can be anything. Don't like the way HN looks? Try to do a redesign on the side. You find that Youtube has a lot of clutter? Try another approach. You get the idea.

4) Read http://ycombinator.com/rfs.html and http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html

5) Read other people's code. I'm by no means an experience programmer, but this is perhaps the single most important thing that I learned from Zed Shaw's excellent Learn Python the Hard Way. You'll be amazed at how much other people's project can inspire you.

7) Most of all, don't ever obsess about finding an idea. Recognize that ideas are important but the way you execute them are much more important.

I hope this helps :)

If you don't have some project in mind that scratches an itch, I'll give you the same answer I give my peers and juniors: Do something different that builds your skills.

There's terabytes of open data, tools and tutorials available on the internet. Build a tool that scrapes the FCC database and allows people to research radio station call signs. Dig into some of the NASA archives, do some image processing. Check out the growing infestation of humans, chart it on maps with the help of US Census data. Build a local weather application. Get a cheap SDR USB radio and build a different GUI to control it. Find your bank/credit unions quarterly posts on their respective government agencies websites and plot how much money they make from fees vs margin. Build a calculator app with advance functions. Tailor it for small business like a roofing contractor. Do any project in a different programming language, then port it to a third. Work through the problems at Programming Praxis or SICP. Tweak a game through Lua or whatever tool kit they offer...

Ah, the forgetfulness idea.

For me the focus is on social mobility, and not letting someone's past entrap them or constrain their future.

The question is more about what data can be used against you in the future, because even if data can be used for you let's start with an assumption that anyone looking is looking for something against you and not for you.

So how to destroy/hide the information that can be used against you?

It would be up to each individual to consider what they wanted to delete from their public record. Whether they think their Twitter is a net positive in their public record or not.

If they did, you'd expect them not to make Twitter forget even though they might still want Facebook and Last.FM forget things (music is an angle by which to judge someone, and perhaps you listened to a lot of stuff that suggests you were a stoner in your early 20s?).

The thing that interests me about this is everyone does things today, with little mind to the future. No-one knows where their life will lead and so they want to curate their past so as not to limit their future.

If we believe that people could be different in future, to have social mobility, to have the ability to better themselves... then the internet needs to forget so that people are not always judged by their past.