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More challenging projects every programmer should try

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Re: More challenging projects every programmer should try

#171

Post by watwut »

anonytrary wrote: post #146
watwut wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people draw blank when they are trying to come up with project idea. They are programmers, not creative after all. Which is why lists like this help.

If you are trying to think of an idea, you're already doing it wrong. The best ideas are motivated by problems you encounter yourself, not by trying to think of ideas. This is the biggest mistake you see with 20-something founders. Best way to come up with ideas is to use existing solutions and realize how shitty they are. Pretty much every single company was formed this way. > They are programmers, not creative afte…

Jesus, plenty of programmers are not creative. Majority really don't have problem they need to solve for themselves. They however want to learn and challenge themselves with variety of exercises.

Why would you took offense in that or why would you assume that everyone is trying to build company is beyond me.

In any case, this list is literally for programmers. It is not for founders. It is not meant to earn you money. It is list of small enough challenging projects that force you to learn new technical skills.

Re: More challenging projects every programmer should try

#172

Post by watwut »

mukwenhac wrote: post #149
watwut wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people draw blank when they are trying to come up with project idea. They are programmers, not creative after all. Which is why lists like this help.

Being a programmer doesn't mean one is not creative, those two are not mutually exclusive. Not to mention that one can observe a problem that can be fixed by a way they already know too.

Sure but plenty of people are attracted to programming because they are not creative. Pretending that they don't exist or pretending that everyone is great at everything is not accurate.

Re: More challenging projects every programmer should try

#173

Post by lou1306 »

mhh__ wrote: post #19
ashleyn wrote: post #7

Write a toy compiler for a basic like language, you'll learn about what your languages are actually doing.

I think, interestingly, that writing the middle of a compiler is actually the best learning as a programmer. Parsing (should be) easy, the backend is hard but well documented and trodden, but the semantic analysis and error handling is where the real murky water is (Especially when you start trying t optimize it, like adding caching or threading or deferred execution)

I could not agree more. Also, most textbooks and resources on compilers always spend a lot of time on grammars, lexing and parsing. Finding good stuff about intermediate representations, optimization passes and static analysis is harder than it should.

Re: More challenging projects every programmer should try

#174

Post by djeiasbsbo »

jamil7 wrote: post #129
djeiasbsbo wrote: post #127

For some simpler projects, I can only recommend doing some digital signal processing. For example, an audio signal is just a list of values, so you can do things like: - Count the number of zero crossings - Find out where they are - Create any shape of wave by adding together multiple sine waves - Hard clip the signal - Stretch a signal and interpolate it with new samples - Invert and revert a signal For level 2, you…

I came across this area recently while trying to build an iOS app that could reliably detect knocks or taps on the body of the phone, I was ultimately unsuccessful but I learned a lot about collecting and analysing microphone and gyroscope data. Also built some nice tooling for collecting live iOS sensor data and transmitting it to prometheus/grafana over mqtt.

That sounds interesting. A cool project would be to inspect gyroscope data when the iOS keyboard is in use. Maybe it would be possible to create a keylogger based on it.

I guess it would depend on how good the data is and which keyboard is being used.

I know that this is possible on Android.

Re: More challenging projects every programmer should try

#175

Post by ZephyrBlu »

jmnicolas wrote: post #163
userbinator wrote: post #43

IMHO a text-based browser isn't exactly in the "challenging" category, as it basically amounts to stripping all the HTML tags out and doing some very simple transformations (like replacing 's with newlines.) Then again, one of the things I've been working on intermittently for the past few years is a graphical (CSS2+) browser, which is definitely in the challenging category. There are some other public efforts too: h…

> IMHO a text-based browser isn't exactly in the "challenging" category, as it basically amounts to [...] All my projects start with me thinking like that, then many hours, days or months later me thinking "hey it was more complex than I thought". For 2021 I want to build a personal finance app for myself. The usual me thinks it will take a couple months. The realist me wonders if it will be finished in this decade :…

There's a difference between scope creep and difficulty.

Re: More challenging projects every programmer should try

#176

Post by RivieraKid »

ma2rten wrote: post #147
fergie wrote: post #123

I would strongly recommend building something that you yourself think is cool, and not feeling that you have to conform to what other people tell you to do.

This comment is like the liar paradox, if people do what the comment suggests they are conforming to what another person tells them to do.

It's not, the comment's point is - don't do things you don't find particularly interesting just because other people suggest it.

Re: More challenging projects every programmer should try

#177

Post by arendtio »

What I am really missing is some kind of real-time AI. A decade ago, I have coded some bot for an ego-shooter with RTS elements and have learnt so much from it (while having a lot of fun).

It starts with basic things like waypoint systems vs. area awareness systems plus the relevant routing algorithms like A*, but goes on to organizing a group of players and finding good strategies. And all of that with a limited time budget and an changing environment around you. Last but not least, you want to emulate human behavior which is probably the hardest part as it includes changing you behavior according to your situation (don't run straight against a wall for 10 seconds) but also taking into account the weaknesses as e.g. humans can't aim perfectly.

Granted, what I have done has a huge field of challenges, but even with a 2D engine I think you can learn a lot from the experience.

Re: More challenging projects every programmer should try

#179

Post by drummersbrother »

arendtio wrote: post #177

What I am really missing is some kind of real-time AI. A decade ago, I have coded some bot for an ego-shooter with RTS elements and have learnt so much from it (while having a lot of fun). It starts with basic things like waypoint systems vs. area awareness systems plus the relevant routing algorithms like A*, but goes on to organizing a group of players and finding good strategies. And all of that with a limited tim…

You may be interested in the game Screeps. From their website (name +.com): "It's an open-source game for programmers, wherein the core mechanic is programming your units' AI. You control your colony by writing JavaScript. "

Re: More challenging projects every programmer should try

#180

Post by caffeine »

IgorPartola wrote: post #106
atomicnumber3 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked in this industry. 2 more common issues: * Doing a latency-sensitive trade when you don't have good execution. It's easy to go wild in simulation and think you can flip in and out of positions. But if you're a retail trader (and in this context, by that I mean "not connected directly to the exchanges, at the minimum") * Not taking into account the impact of your own trading on markets. This is obviously impos…

Would you mind if I asked you a question since I have never worked in this industry but did play with crypto trading a while back. Before Mt Gox was shut down I was trading on a couple of tertiary small exchanges and at the time there was a lot of talk of arbitrage between different exchanges and how transaction latency and fees made it very risky at best and a losing proposition in most cases. But what I was wonderi…

Your idea is right but the timescale is much shorter. Essentially it's a race. And in 2014 you could make good money doing exactly what you described, the timescale was millis. In 2016-2017 even more money, but different venues.

What you are describing is the most basic, canonical form of latency arbitrage.

That idea is implemented widely in the HFT industry across all sorts of products, not just crypto, with billions spent on trading the information faster

(Source: this is my job).

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