Learning Programming, Ideas Wanted

[Eternull]

Hello guys, I'm a student at high school and not currently enrolled in any programming classes, and have wanted to expand my programming skills for a while now and have spent the better part of a year trying to, and my well of ideas have run dry, so I am here to try and get you guys to help me come up with some ideas I can work on to learn. I know basic C++/C#, and Java. Any help will be appreciated.

 

Thank you.

[tp95112]

One way I motivated myself to learn more about programming was through Unity. Since scripts were written either Java or C#. I already was learning Java and c# is pretty much the same oop. it was a fun way to improve my skills in programming and kept wanting to learn more by reading through docs and videos. Another good way to learn is to try to simplfy something you do alot. I use vlc to watch twitch and the way I had to do it was edit a batch file and input a twitch link or something. So I simplified that for myself and wrote a program that did it for me.

[fizzlesticks]

16 minutes ago, tp95112 said:

Since scripts were written either Java or C#. I already was learning Java and c# is pretty much the same oop.

Java != JavaScript

[bgibbz]

57 minutes ago, Eternull said:

Hello guys, I'm a student at high school and not currently enrolled in any programming classes, and have wanted to expand my programming skills for a while now and have spent the better part of a year trying to, and my well of ideas have run dry, so I am here to try and get you guys to help me come up with some ideas I can work on to learn. I know basic C++/C#, and Java. Any help will be appreciated.

 

Thank you.

I am a high school kid is has self taught every language I know, c#, c, c++, JavaScript, CSS, HTML. While I'm far from an expert in any of them, I continue to work with each. Use textbooks/ online resources to try to learn the fundamentals. Once you pick up the syntaks and basic methods it's pretty easy to get programming. The best way to learn a language form this point is experience. Simply write basic programs to do basic stuff. Use your imagination or search the Internet for ideas. Some stuff I did was write programs that do basic math operations, such as factor integers, convert decimals to fractions, generate prime number lists, etc. a very useful tool as well is a site called code wars. Essentially, it is site full of user created puzzles for a huge variety of languages. The puzzles range from very easy to pretty difficult, and most involve solving some real world issue. Doing lots of these puzzles will drastically improve your problem solving ability, as programming is a mindset more than anything. 

[Eternull]

Thanks for all your guys help especially bgibbz, I registered for CodeWars and plan on using that.

[noahdvs]

Try making a calculator app. It might sound boring, but it's the perfect long term project for a beginner. You can use a gui or cli and start off with simple addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and modulus for input with a result as output. Later, you can make things more complicated and useful by allowing the user to enter expressions or store history for the user. Eventually, you can add graphing.

[straight_stewie]

On 3/7/2017 at 1:29 PM, Eternull said:

my well of ideas have run dry, so I am here to try and get you guys to help me come up with some ideas I can work on to learn. I know basic C++/C#, and Java. Any help will be appreciated.

 

1 hour ago, noahdvs said:

Try making a calculator app. It might sound boring, but it's the perfect long term project for a beginner.

I have to second @noahdvs suggestion that a calculator is a good project with continuing challenges. In C# it would be all to simple to make a GUI app that can accept functions and graph them and other things as well.

But even a basic command line calculator offers excellent practice, it can teach you anything from the standard Shunting Yard Algorithm to build Abstract Syntax Trees (which necessitates a lexer and a parser). The latter being a pretty advanced subject and a very useful skill to have in your toolbag, as those are the basic building blocks of most compilers. Eventually you would even be able to add nice things like graphing, taking derivatives and graphing, finding domain and range, finding asymptotes, integrating, summations. Summations is an interesting topic actually, because it will help more with your compiler building skills learned through the Abstract Syntax Tree implementation of a calculator.

Other projects can include ProjectEuler, but many of these problems involve large domains and complex math, and thinking very critically about the problem, although they are all attainable.

What helps one to learn programming is largely personal preference, but I'm at a point in my education and my knowledge where I prefer to implement things that may not even have a point, just to learn them. 

[Beskamir]

If your out of ideas try coding some of the stuff you find on Matt Parker's channel. For instance this shouldn't be too difficult to write:

Alternatively you could try automating your homework

[Mira Yurizaki]

On 3/13/2017 at 0:14 AM, straight_stewie said:

But even a basic command line calculator offers excellent practice, it can teach you anything from the standard Shunting Yard Algorithm to build Abstract Syntax Trees (which necessitates a lexer and a parser). The latter being a pretty advanced subject and a very useful skill to have in your toolbag, as those are the basic building blocks of most compilers. Eventually you would even be able to add nice things like graphing, taking derivatives and graphing, finding domain and range, finding asymptotes, integrating, summations. Summations is an interesting topic actually, because it will help more with your compiler building skills learned through the Abstract Syntax Tree implementation of a calculator.

Oh hey, a command line style graphing calculator was one of my college course projects.

 

I'm still bummed I lost my source code.

[Karim66y]

Well start by learning what is a cpu and what is an instruction set (don't over do it just learn for ex: like what is an integer and why we have registers) so you can avoid my mistacks when starting to learn programming (mess around with 8086 instruction set in an emelator) the reason why start with low level programing is just so you can understand what memory is and what a cpu is,and while you are doing soo start learning aome discret math (logical math) after a month or 2 you will almost understand what is going under the hood like what is a type for example.

Then start with simple programming languages like python after you learned the baiscs start learning algorithems.

If you find this is too much just start with python but the thing is eventully you will need to learn what a cpu does like metioned above inorder yo write a valid program.