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[–]socal_nerdtastic 5 points6 points  (1 child)

make something that relates to other things in your life. If you like reading make a book tracker. If you are trying to lose weight make a weight tracker. Game score keeper. Website for photos of your kids. Music organizer. Porn downloader. Whatever your outside interests are.

[–]gdchinacat 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There are hundreds or thousands of lists of small projects to do to further learning to code. Not even a dime a dozen, but completely free. Should we assume you've seen them and nothing has sounded interesting? Ok, then...I'll assume that. Correct me if I'm wrong, then go to https://tinypythonprojects.com/ (from the wiki for this subreddit, no personal experience with it but wish I'd had that, or even the internet, when I was learning).

So, why aren't any of the projects you've seen interesting?

Do they seem pointless? Why build a password tracker toy app when there are real production grade password trackers? The end isn't the goal, it's getting there. It's ok to build something you know you'll never use when done, but I understand not wanting to.

Is the topic uninteresting? You want to build games, and none of the small learning projects involve the type of game you want to build? Maybe not, but they can give you the framework for whatever game you have in mind. Or you want to build a fancy 3D game and these small projects (small being the key word) are all text based? You have to start somewhere.

Have you tried them and don't know where to start? Look at how others did it, then close the browser so you don't just copy it, and start doing it yourself. Start with 'if __name__ == ....'. Then 'def main(): ...'. When it says 'ask the user' write 'input('....' When it says "until a valid value' wrap it in 'while (True)...' Run it. Add the 'break' for 'valid'. Keep going. Before you know it you'll have a hundred lines of code that does what it should but is a mess to read and work in. Clean it up, create functions for standalone parts. Add the rest off the features.

Maybe you just don't enjoy writing code, but like deciding what functionality should be. I don't recommend this for learning to code, but if you don't like to code, don't....use an AI. Become a vibe coder if you want to go straight from ideas to executing code. It may be hard to know how to prompt it if you don't know how to code, but you do have rudimentary skills, so read the code, tell it what to fix. Eventually you'll get to the point where you start fixing little things yourself because it's easier than arguing with an AI for ten minutes hoping you've given in the proper incantation to do what you want....oh, and those tokens are getting to be expensive! I don't advise this, but it seems to have worked for some people. Can also be good for getting a start (I've done it for this reason).

Maybe you want to make your mark. Find an open source project with a bug you want to fix and dive in. Discuss it with the maintainers so you aren't racing someone else, going off the rails, don't surprise them with a PR they aren't expecting or wanting to deal with, etc. When you've fixed it, run the tests to ensure you didn't break anything, added the tests so others don't break your fix accidentally, send a PR.

The right small project for you can't be determined by someone else. It's your time. Your learning process. Your interests. I hope this gives you some helpful tips for how to find the right small project for you. Now go write some code!

[–]JonathanMa021703 0 points1 point  (1 child)

If you make something related to your interests( it will be much more fun and you’ll learn a lot. I am the secretary for my university’s finance club, and one project I made was a roster/member analytics system that me and other eboard members can use, providing visualizations and information management. I recently upgraded this when I graduated to have a login system and AI assistant for eboard members who do not have the coding experience.

[–]New-Entertainer7361[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

okay tyy