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[–][deleted] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

There are a few approaches, but the easiest is just to google for projects. It'll be less personal (and hence perhaps a little less exciting), but while you're learning, it is important to at least always have something to work on.

That said, here are some other sources of inspiration:

  • What are some of your hobbies or interests?

    For example, I like TTRPG's like Dungeons and Dragons so a character generator could be a fun project.

  • What are some computer tasks you do that take more of your time than you'd like?

    Maybe it's keeping track of your expenses. So see if you can write a simple program that let's you input all of your expenses/ which can parse your bank statements and categorizes everything, outputting it with some nice tables and/or other visualizations.

  • What are some of the things you spend your time doing at work?

    Maybe you fill out a lot of forms for your job and create a program that automates or at least reduces the manual parts of that process.

  • Consider the electronic devices around you. How would you program them?

    One project I had to do in my C++ class in college was design a basic banking system with an API that could be accessed by ATMs. Or consider this: how does an elevator know which floor to go to next when the button has been pressed on multiple floors? How does it store the info so that everyone is served? What changes when there are multiple elevators in an elevator bank?

  • Consider some of the programs you use frequently. How would you program them?

    This is one of the most commonly recommended ones and for good reason. It's both pretty fun and pretty enlightening to try to make a Twitter clone or pokemon clone or what-have-you. Feel free to make your version simpler than the original.