Ask HN: Looking for side project ideas • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Looking for side project ideas

#151

Post by gitgud » Mon, May 25, 2020, 1:05 AM UTC

If the goal is to improve your skillset, then maybe try building a real-time multiple game. You will learn many different skills, including:

- Graphics: Displaying 2d/3d graphics, using the GPU, shaders, etc..

- Multiple Clients: Dealing with multiple browsers or OS's

- Realtime Communication: Multiplayer will require sockets or web-rtc to provide a realtime experience

- Database Tech: Depending on what DB you choose, you'll learn CAP theorem and other trade-offs.

- Algorithms: Developing gameplay logic, rendering logic, AI logic.

- User Experience: Making the game fun, getting feedback and implementing sugguestions.

Making a game is also very satisfying, which is important to prevent burnout during the project.

Re: Ask HN: Looking for side project ideas

#152

Post by Diesel555 » Mon, May 25, 2020, 1:21 AM UTC

arvidkahl wrote: post #57

The best products happen at the intersection of an existing niche you are some level of expert in already and a technology that has not yet been adopted in that niche. I've found one approach work very well with my mentees: - Figure out which "special interest groups" you are part of beyond software engineering. That can be "aquarium owner", "coffee lover", "morning person", "diligent grandson" — the less technical,…

I guess that's what I did. Niche is fighter pilot, product is generating target imagery for training. dieselplanning.com.

Re: Ask HN: Looking for side project ideas

#153

Post by fallenatreus » Mon, May 25, 2020, 1:29 AM UTC

Dumblydorr wrote: post #71

I don't want you to take this personally, but your post seems very low effort. How can we devote time to helping you if you only put 10 seconds into making this post without reviewing it? For one, writing skills are important. You will have a hard time selling your project to anyone on its merits if you write incomplete sentences with lackluster English. Second, you haven't taken the time to list out what your streng…

This. Despite being a management graduate and IELTS score of 8 bands I struggle to form cohesive sentences and almost lose the essence of my message especially in online forums like this.

I have seen people reply with so much consistency and grammatically well-formed sentences I almost cringe how they have honed their craft to this level. What's the secret? Any ideas on how to work on improving writing skills especially in formal settings & forums.

PS: had a boss who was so consistent in his writing that he used to reply in full sentences even on IM with punctuation and all that. I secretly admired him.

PPS: Is Grammarly premium worth it?

Re: Ask HN: Looking for side project ideas

#154

Post by abnry » Mon, May 25, 2020, 2:17 AM UTC

tmbsundar wrote: post #108

sandreas wrote: post #84

Well in my opinion you should create something that helps yourself (!) - not others. Think of your all day life - some things you do pretty often and try to find a project, that really would help you. If there already is a great open source project for your purpose (and probably there is), you could try to get part of it... improve things... read code (which is a good way to get a better skillset!). Targeting a bette…

>> - A tool to improve scanned document images and create a pdf Would you mind sharing the approach you used or the product page if it is public? Incidentally, I was trying today to get two images combined into a single image and convert that into a single PDF. Tried with paint.net, MS Paint 3D etc., It was messy and the resultant PDF was also huge. Finally, gave up and manually pasted the images into a word doc and…

Look into ImageMagick and pdftk. That will solve your problems.

Re: Ask HN: Looking for side project ideas

#155

Post by sandreas » Mon, May 25, 2020, 5:05 AM UTC

tmbsundar wrote: post #108

sandreas wrote: post #84

Well in my opinion you should create something that helps yourself (!) - not others. Think of your all day life - some things you do pretty often and try to find a project, that really would help you. If there already is a great open source project for your purpose (and probably there is), you could try to get part of it... improve things... read code (which is a good way to get a better skillset!). Targeting a bette…

>> - A tool to improve scanned document images and create a pdf Would you mind sharing the approach you used or the product page if it is public? Incidentally, I was trying today to get two images combined into a single image and convert that into a single PDF. Tried with paint.net, MS Paint 3D etc., It was messy and the resultant PDF was also huge. Finally, gave up and manually pasted the images into a word doc and…

My approach (in java) was using a set of filters to clean up the image with BoofCV, then using tess4j OCR to make the document searchable and then use Apache PDFBox to create a PDF with invisible text layer. Its not open source yet (i plan to do so), but you could take a look at https://github.com/ctodobom/OpenNoteScanner - which seems to be much more advanced.

Re: Ask HN: Looking for side project ideas

#156

Post by la_fayette » Mon, May 25, 2020, 5:27 AM UTC

askytb wrote: post #116

la_fayette wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... ok what approach would you use for that? Let's say you use yolo to detect th bounding box of the cat, but how do you want to identify the cat, based on your sample images?

Re-train https://github.com/davidsandberg/facenet on cats?

Ok. This could work, somebody tried it for dogs (https://github.com/GuillaumeMougeot/DogFaceNet)...

For the problem to solve in the first place, one might use a gps-tracker for pets or something.

Re: Ask HN: Looking for side project ideas

#157

Post by purplezooey » Mon, May 25, 2020, 6:38 AM UTC

tobr wrote: post #90

I counted at least six mistakes in your question text, so I would recommend you to work on your writing skills. Luckily, writing is a universally useful skill, and almost any side project you pick should give you an opportunity to practice writing.

So you decided the best way to help was to scold OP about his English mistakes.

Re: Ask HN: Looking for side project ideas

#158

Post by tobr » Mon, May 25, 2020, 1:17 PM UTC

purplezooey wrote: post #157

tobr wrote: post #90

I counted at least six mistakes in your question text, so I would recommend you to work on your writing skills. Luckily, writing is a universally useful skill, and almost any side project you pick should give you an opportunity to practice writing.

So you decided the best way to help was to scold OP about his English mistakes.

Come on. They asked for advice on which skills to improve. I know nothing about them except that they seem to struggle to piece together a sentence.

Re: Ask HN: Looking for side project ideas

#159

Post by mersocarlin » Mon, May 25, 2020, 7:54 PM UTC

krm01 wrote: post #17

1. Write down the apps on your phone or computer that you use the most. If you want to bootstrap a profitable business, I recommend listing the apps you use for work. 2. Write down the one feature for each app that you use the most within that app. 3. Write down what slightly annoys you about that one feature 4. Build the product around the one feature you feel you can cook up quickly and that will benefit your workf…

My story: I was tracking my expenses in a spreadsheet. But it was starting to get really annoying having to keep receipts (I ended up losing most of them) and remembering to open the spreadsheet every time I had a new expense.

I created my own expense tracker and I use it to share stuff with my wife :)

https://atomicmoney.app

Re: Ask HN: Looking for side project ideas

#160

Post by andre66r » Mon, May 25, 2020, 8:12 PM UTC

mersocarlin wrote: post #159

krm01 wrote: post #17

1. Write down the apps on your phone or computer that you use the most. If you want to bootstrap a profitable business, I recommend listing the apps you use for work. 2. Write down the one feature for each app that you use the most within that app. 3. Write down what slightly annoys you about that one feature 4. Build the product around the one feature you feel you can cook up quickly and that will benefit your workf…

My story: I was tracking my expenses in a spreadsheet. But it was starting to get really annoying having to keep receipts (I ended up losing most of them) and remembering to open the spreadsheet every time I had a new expense. I created my own expense tracker and I use it to share stuff with my wife :) https://atomicmoney.app

Hey. Just a suggestion: would be nice to have a feeling of the app before signing in ;)