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Tell HN: I Need Project Ideas

64 points by eballci ↗ HN
Hello everyone, I am Computer Science student which enthusiast about programming, software development techniques, project management and system design. I always read a lot of blog posts, cool stuff or techniques. Though, i can not find the way how to practise them. Sometimes i find an idea that i may accomplish. Afterwards next i'm thinking about the idea and i realize the idea is not fullfilled or not useful for humanity, community, at least for me. And i am here to discuss my issue. Every comment is welcome.

Note: This is my first post on HN so if i violated some rules by (or the way) posting this i am so sorry. And also sorry for that i am not fluent in english.

46 comments

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sagarjs
Look for problems. There’s a lot out there.

Then see if you can solve the problem or part of it with your skills and knowledge.

This is the approach I’ve followed.

I’m currently working on an app that helps visually impaired people be more independent. Reach out if tou want to join this project.

colpabar
> Sometimes i find an idea that i may accomplish. Afterwards next i'm thinking about the idea and i realize the idea is not fullfilled or not useful for humanity, community, at least for me

So what? There are plenty of really cool projects that aren't actually "useful" to anyone. The important part is actually accomplishing something that you can show to others. Just build things that you're interested in - you'll gain skills that way and build up a portfolio of work that you can show employers down the road. If you want to contribute to something that actually provides value to people, consider contributing to open source projects.

malux85
While you’re a student your job is to learn and practice, humanity will do just fine without your immediate efforts, so sharpen up your skills first.

Start by making a store and get payment processing working, this will teach you heaps about abstraction, interfaces, integrating third party APIs, error handling, logging, debugging and deployments.

You don’t have to finish it (but you should try, discipline is important) and you’ll likely find other areas of interest as you go along. Make notes, just Text files organised in folders is fine to start

It’s really important that you just start something, it doesn’t matter what, but you need practice and stuff to talk about and SHOW employers, don’t get analysis paralysis.

rdtwo
Making a storefront is a great project.
willcipriano
Why does the thing you build need to be useful? All of my side projects are essentially useless. Its more fun that way.
newlisp
Usefulness makes it more interesting and motivating.
willcipriano
I work on useful stuff all day, my side projects are way more interesting.

To say useless doesn't mean it doesn't work for it's intended purpose. Just that the purpose isn't trying to change the world.

Origami is pointless but would you really get more fulfillment making paper plates?

rodolphoarruda
I have an idea log on my website. The content is in Portuguese, but I think you can use a web translator to get readable text. In case you find something of your interest and want to discuss it on detail, let me know.

https://rodolphoarruda.pro.br/ideias/

leobg
I think you should add some form of contact info in your profile. In case somebody wants to connect with you directly.
chaps
Submit FOIA requests for data of your local government. You'll find it way more interesting than it sounds, I promise.
Barrera
> I always read a lot of blog posts, cool stuff or techniques.

You might try writing a blog post. If you're not used to thinking through writing, the results may surprise you.

Pick a topic you know well, or at least think you know well. Then write about it. You'll soon realize cracks in your understanding you never knew existed. Those cracks contain project ideas.

> Afterwards next i'm thinking about the idea and i realize the idea is not fullfilled or not useful for humanity, community, at least for me.

You can talk yourself out of any project idea. One way to deal with this problem is README-driven development.[1] You don't want to commit to a project because you don't know if it's worthwhile. You won't know if it's worthwhile until you spend some time on it. How to spend just the right amount of time? Write the README first.

[1] https://tom.preston-werner.com/2010/08/23/readme-driven-deve...

cinntaile
It's more fun to read about idea's instead of actually turning them into reality, it sounds like a discipline issue. Then again it's not like you need to spend time doing something you don't really want to do anyway, you'll learn plenty in school. If you really want to learn more you can always do the bonus assignments that some classes have.
abathur
I'd recommend easing yourself into an existing technical community organized around something you use or find interesting. (This will probably be software/hardware, but it could honestly be any field of knowledge you find interesting--there are inevitably anthropologists, biologists, painters, photographers, etc. out in the world who wish they had some tool they don't know how to build.)

To start, just explore, learn, and help others. (If you find this boring, it's a good sign to pick another community.) Sooner or later, you'll bump into real bugs and missing features/tools, and you'll have an excuse to start learning how to implement them. If you feel like you are understanding very well (perhaps you're able to regularly help people from memory) and no good opportunities have presented themselves, you could also start asking around. I would focus on people who are visibly working on their own projects; ask for any standalone projects on their todo lists that they don't have time/energy for.

---

As an aside, the right project probably depends on what motivates you. Not what motivated you to post this--but what motivates you to keep waking up on this side of the dirt each day. I.e.:

- If you are motivated by learning more than building, you may be able to get away with picking something at random.

- If you are more motivated by building things (a good test--does leaving things unfinished weigh heavily on you?), you'll probably do best if you can find something that will scratch an itch of your own. When you're scratching your own itch, it's easier to avoid analysis-paralysis over the needs of users that you don't have yet. Unfortunately, there's a chicken/egg problem here. It's easier to find itches when you're already working on some kind of project (of your own, or with others). I regularly bump into little things that could make a good project.

- If you are indeed more motivated by helping other people, it's good to start preparing now for the possibility that you are in for a rough ride. There are a lot of missing little tools out in the world that would be useful for other developers or the general public--but there's also a vast sea of interesting little tools that've already been built that have somewhere between 0 and 100 users. You will not only have to solve the problem, but to help others you'll probably have to promote your own work. (Pay attention to whether this sounds boring, exciting, or horrifying. You can overcome boring/horrifying if you are really committed, but it may be a grind if you aren't...)

danielmarkbruce
Tom Brady is probably practicing throwing a ball right now. Is it useful to society?
glouwbug
Write your own programming language and then go solve a bunch of leetcode with it
roschdal
Make an AI which can automate accounting.
danudey
> the idea is not fullfilled or not useful for humanity, community, at least for me

Facebook, for all its faults, didn't start out as a social network to connect people and collaborate; it started out as some sexist objectifying bullshit to rank women based on their appearances.

If you ranked every project from most beneficial to humanity to least, Zuckerberg's original project was near the bottom, but the potential that Facebook had before it started destroying democracy for engagement metrics was near the top.

If a site that started out as just sexist trash could somehow morph into a giant, world-spanning social network connecting people with each other across the globe, then please don't think that your projects need to be fantastic right out of the gate.

musicale
> If a site that started out as just sexist trash could somehow morph into...

- an intrusive surveillance system that puts the FBI to shame

- a system of increasingly isolated and toxic echo chambers

- a disinformation and propaganda machine powerful enough to shape public opinion, influence elections, and facilitate civil unrest and extremism

- an "attention economy" where people are encouraged to scroll infinitely so they view more advertisements

- something that makes people feel worse about themselves and generally depressed

etc.

akshatmittal108
I think of any tech product as a tool similar to a knife. The way knife can be used for cutting vegetables as well as for stabbing someone, similarly a technology can be used for both productive and negative use-cases. It's upto the individual on how they want to use it. Having said that I agree facebook could have done a better job at solving above difficult problems.
latexr
> I think of any tech product as a tool similar to a knife.

Tools are designed for their use-case. A butter knife won’t be useful for stabbing, while a hunting knife will excel at it. An airliner delivers passengers, a bomber delivers destruction. Both are planes, both are tools, and both have wildly different applications.

If you knowingly keep developing a tech product which actively harms people at a societal and individual level, you don’t get to hide behind “it’s just a tool, it can be used for good or bad”. It will be used for whatever you designed it, and Facebook is designed to empower its creator with utter disregard for anyone else. You don’t use Facebook, it uses you.

heromal
Sounds good for virtue signaling, nice job.
emerged
Write down all of your strongest interests and skills in rank order. Think up project ideas which combine the most of those interests and skills. This is your sweet spot where you have something special to offer the world just as a matter of sheer statistics.
danudey
A few random ideas:

The world could use an open-source project to manage restaurants; content management backend, let people add in all of their menu items with photos, descriptions, etc. and then surface that to the website (or not). Mobile app support, iPad- or web-based ordering (for servers or customers), Skip/DoorDash/UberEats integration, or self-managed delivery could all be potential for-profit addons, as well as hosting and consulting. This is something that I could potentially see people liking and using, and could also turn into a potentially profitable business.

I play D&D a lot; it would be nice if there were an e.g. AndroidTV or AppleTV app that could display maps, including with fog-of-war, etc. I tried to do stuff like this with existing tools and had a really hard time lining up the existing grids on battlemaps with what the software understood to be the grids in the software (used for calculations). This one would require a GM interface to show/hide areas, active stuff, whatever. No idea if it would be fun to build (maybe use computer vision to detect battlemap grids?) but it's a thought.

livinglist
depends on what kinda specialization you are interested in, at least for me it’s mobile app development. I have been making apps since college, I was interested in Japanese language so I made a kanji learning app [0], then because I’m a bodybuilder, I made a workout log app [1], recently because I started reading hacker news, I made a Hacker News reader [2]. I learnt a lot from the process, from architecture, design pattern to code quality control. I would say learning is the key, usefulness is secondary.

[0] https://github.com/Livinglist/Manji [1] https://github.com/Livinglist/Dumbbell [2] https://github.com/Livinglist/Hacki

mamcx
"I always read a lot of blog posts, cool stuff or techniques."

There, your problem.

Jump around everything shinny and Wonderfull, and jump again when something else steal the focus.

---

I have not cure for this, I'm the same. But after years I regret badly how much jumping around shinny delay the joy of actually do something.

So, read. Is fun.

But pick one major thing you wanna do, and the thing that, hopefully, you wanna do FOR LIFE (or a big chunk of it).

And focus on that.

P.D: I always tough on build a FoxPro/Access hybrid but never start it, then start it and get distracted or busy. Only lately putting actual focus.

This was 20 years ago!

musicale
I need a way to sort through the many dozens of project ideas I have and commit to one or two that are actually worth doing. ;-/
thfuran
You could obtain a small metal disc etched with distinct patterns on each face, designate one of those patterns to represent doing a project and the other not doing a project, perturb the disc in such a way that it violently upends in the air, then wait to see which pattern is displayed when the disc comes to rest on a surface, repeating as necessary as you proceed down the list of potential projects until the desired number have been selected.
Aurum197
Here's one idea: creating support pods for people, especially those in one-person households, so the members of a pod all automatically check on each other on a daily basis. And if something awful happens to any, a series of processes get kicked off (like calling family, local police/hospital, work, etc.) I have at least two friends who are single, who live on their own, and don't seem to have much of an immediate support system.