I'm Liviu, and I work as a Solutions Architect at Endtest.
Are you looking to give your resume a boost?
Here are 6 projects that are not only fun to implement, but will also make you stand out.
1. Your first GitHub Action
GitHub Actions allow you to set up CI/CD workflows using a configuration file right in your GitHub repo.
You can even publish them on the GitHub Marketplace, so other users can add them in their own repos.
Personally, I worked on the Endtest GitHub Action.
To start, you just have to create an action.yml file with a specific format.
Inside that file, you can have multiple steps which are executing different scripts in different languages and you can pass arguments between them.
All the details are provided in their quickstart guide.
2. Your first Chrome Extension
Chrome Extensions are small software programs that customize the browsing experience, allowing users to tailor Chrome functionalities to individual needs or preferences.
The best part is that you can build one just by using HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
I worked on the Endtest Chrome Extension and it was a fun experience.
If you're curious to see how that works, you can find more details here.
There are endless possibilities and getting your extension on the Chrome Web Store is definitely something that will look great on your resume.
Their Getting Started Tutorial really helped me.
3. Your first Google Maps API project
It's amazing to think about how many applications use the Google Maps API.
Uber, DoorDash, Instacart and many more.
I only used the JavaScript version of this API and I found it to be intuitive.
You can find the official documentation here.
It's so easy to use even if you just started learning JavaScript.
You can build your own version of Uber, or you can build a game like Plague Inc.
4. Your first OCR project
OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition.
It's a technology that you can use to read and extract text from any image.
You can create an app for digitizing documents or an instant translation app.
Fortunately, you don't have to reinvent the wheel, because you can just use a Tesseract-based library, such as pytesseract.
To get the best results, you'll need to convert the image to Grayscale, increase the contrast and the sharpness and make sure the image is aligned.
Or you can just use the Amazon Rekognition API.
I've used it on numerous occasions, most recently when we added OCR capabilities to Endtest.
5. Your first Slack App
Slack provides an API for users to create apps and automate processes, such as sending automatic notifications based on human input, sending alerts on specified conditions, and automatically creating internal support tickets.
I had the chance to work on the Endtest Slack App, which is a big hit among our users.
It's a really basic example, since it just sends a summary of the test execution results to the Slack channels of the users.
But the capabilities of the Slack API go way beyond that.
You can connect it to any external service and use your Slack channel as an interface for that service.
For more details, check out the Start building Slack apps section.
6. Your first API
There's an API for almost everything nowadays.
A great way to come up with an idea for an API is to think of something that a lot of developers would use, which can't be done with just a few lines of code.
Don't forget about versioning and be careful with those changes!
After you're done, you can even publish it on an API Marketplace like RapidAPI.
I did work on the following APIs:
• Endtest API
• Endtest Utilities API
• Endtest Mailbox API
It's a great experience because you have to think from the perspective of other developers and make things as frictionless as possible.
Happy coding!
Top comments (12)
All great ideas. I did use the Google Maps API a few months ago and it looked like you needed to pay for it.
I highly recommend Mapbox, I played with it quite a while ago and back then it had a generous free tier, nice API, libraries and a bunch of examples
Thanks, I'll check that one out.
Interesting. It seems you're right.
I just checked that on their pricing page.
Back when I used it, you got the API credentials for free without having to add any credit card and you would only need to pay if you wanted to perform a large number of requests.
Yeah, Google is charging for every API call. You can still build and use it, but it covers the map, kinda like a paywall.
But it's free up to $200 per month. Or am I wrong?
It looks like you're correct about the free $200 credit/month. You have to enable billing to get it, so Google needs a CC on file.
Good ideas here and definitely not the usual copy and paste type projects which everyone does.
Really good ideas. I think doing these projects will provide a good practice on different real world scenarios.
Definitely I'll try them.
Thanks for sharing.
Thank you for taking the time to write that comment.
It makes me happy to know that these project ideas have inspired you.
Symu.co !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Great ideas!
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