HN Explorer

Ask HN: Good app ideas to learn a new platform

10 points by davidbalbert ↗ HN
So I wanted to start learning iPhone development last night and I didn't really know what to build. I thought it would be nice to have a list of little projects in order of increasing difficulty for learning mobile development, web development, game development, and desktop development.

Got any ideas?

If we get a good list, I'll put them up on a website or something like that.

Here are mine:

For game development:

1) Blackjack (console)

2) Tetris

For web development

1) todo list

13 comments

[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 40.4 ms ] thread
MichaelGlass
Conway's Game of Life because it has a simple backend and a simple grid-based GUI
davidbalbert
For which category?
MichaelGlass
either, really. not much of a stateful backend but it's a nice toy in javascript.
mgeraci
+1 for Game of Life. But that's coming from two guys who just made Game of Life simulators. Good to play with canvas, as well.
aepstein
How about something for Hackruiter? Using your API? Plot all companies on a map? Contact form to sign up to meet you guys? Some type of programming-challenge checker?
davidbalbert
I love it. Don't know why I didn't think of this. nicholasbs started riffing off of this idea and I have some good ideas.

I still think a more general list is probably worth it, but I'm going to start by building this :)

aepstein
Nice. Looking forward to seeing the prototype next time we meet up :)
HamiltonMD
some sort of poll?

for iPhone:

1) thats what she said app(or some other phrase to play on command, and record audio)

2) location-based scavenger hunt

handler
for web development, i feel like creating twitter is a nice small beginner project. anything that has a one to one, one to many, and many to many relationship would do the trick.
nnythm
web browser
davidbalbert
With embedded browser views (a la webkit), this is actually pretty doable.
knowledgesale
I am using the public transportation to get to work and every time I need to make a trip I have to look up the time of the next bus either in a paper schedule or on the site.

I would love to have an app that just shows the time left to the next bus for my special route right away. One can use google maps api to get the schedules and make it possible to set up a route once and for all.

There is a nice site for one specific subway route for a russian university that is a good illustration of this idea http://tutu.mipt.ru/