looking for some ideas of projects to work on? here’s a long list of ideas for inspiration. try any of these in any programming language you want! or, preferably, read this list, say “all these ideas are dumb! i have a way better idea!” and then do that. and maybe do a pull request and update this list :)

programming languages

want to learn something about a new programming language? try doing anything below in one of {go, lisp, clojure, python, ruby, java, c++, c, javascript, haskell, erlang, postscript, perl, prolog, smalltalk, intercal, actionscript}. maybe check out some codecademy classes.

some kinds of languages you might not have used before:

• functional languages: haskell, clojure, lisp, ocaml
• stack-based languages: postscript
• graphical languages: processing
• logic programming languages: prolog
• languages where you have to say ‘please’: intercal
• concurrent programming langues: erlang, go
• assembly languages

music & animations & games

• generate midi files to create music
• make a simple game — snake or frogger. javascript/python (using pygame) are good choices for this
• make animations (maybe with css3?)
• rotating cube / molecules / particles bouncing around the screen / infinitely growing fractals
• ants crawling around the screen
• googly eyes that follow the mouse around the screen. you know, like this
• a double pendulum (a pendulum attached to a pendulum)
• implement your favorite screensaver
• write a text adventure (like the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy)
• make videos from your instagram/flickr photos
• make a web version of your favorite board game (copyright issues may
  apply)
• write a multiplayer game server

web development

• make a website using a web framework {django, rails, flask, grails,
  yesod, node, compojure}
• make yourself a personal website.
• make an animation with javascript visualization libraries. maybe some d3?
• make yourself a dashboard homepage with dashing: demo, github
• make a presentation using impress.js
• display things on a map using google maps or openstreetmap or textile
• here is a cool usenet post from 1999 with some ideas

playing with data

• nasa images-of-the-day
• stm data
• ville de montreal data (images, bike paths, library books, traffic lights, parking, garbage collection dates, …)
• yahoo! answers and other yahoo! open data
• github data
• transcripts from parliament
• all kinds of machine learning datasets are available here
• download all your emails from gmail/hotmail and find out what kinds of things you say the most
• montreal ouvert
• do some of the competitions on kaggle
• don’t trust google with your data? write a program using twilio to email/text/call you a week before your friends’ birthdays

other

• fix an annoying bug in an open source program that you use
• have a dumb phone instead of a smartphone? find out how they’re stored on your phone and find a way to automatically sync them
• write your own programming language, or a dsl/embedded dsl using clojure/lisp/scheme/haskell
• write a compiler for an existing programming language (brainfuck, shakespeare, …)
• write an android app to find out how much you’re moving. and text you to complain if you’re not moving enough
• write a daemon to take a picture of yourself every day and stitch them together at the end of the year. and do image processing to make sure you’re wearing clothes in the pictures :)
• do exercises from sicp
• write a jabber/google talk/aim/msn/irc chatbot. that messages you with a new recipe each day. or that reminds you to get up and walk around if you’ve been online for too long

hardware

• make some leds blink using an arduino
• make a robot!
• find out how a remote control works
• make a turn signal cycling jacket with a lilypad!
• buy a raspberry pi and hack the remote control for your camera, install xbmc and have your own cheap tv thing. can you maybe make a webserver for your thermostat?