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Discussion on: Project ideas!!! (Frustrated)

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Jeff Hachtel

I speak to the local Community College's Software Engineering students as part of a role at work. This is what I tell them, though, you already have lots of great recommendations. (I assume you want to work as a dev, but my advice stands if you are just a hobbyist.)

Pick something small that you can integrate the following:

  1. A web-based graphical user interface
  2. A back-end service for the 'business logic'
  3. A database
  4. Unit tests
  5. CI/CD
  6. Git

It doesn't have to be fancy, and you don't need every single one of the above, but you want a project that will give you something to talk about with prospective employers.

For example, a Pokemon or MTG card app:

  1. Use React or Angular to create a UI that allows you to lookup cards by name, number - whatever - displays the card pic and maybe some info.
  2. Skip the back-end and call a public API instead (See others' posts)
  3. Use a sqlite database to store cards you've looked up (or saved)
  4. Write as many tests as you can think of
  5. Use at least one of GitHub's free CI/CD tools: resources.github.com/ci-cd/
  6. Practice using Git to make small commits at points that make sense to you that you could roll back to if something goes wrong

Again, nothing fancy, just something that works. You'll learn a ton, it will give you something to talk about with other devs and in interviews. I'd much rather hire someone who was knee-deep in the struggle to build an app like this, who could talk sensibly to me about the issues they are facing, than to hire someone who did a desktop todo app, or a web UI todo app, and so on. We work in an integrated environment and the skills you'll learn will be transferrable.