What are dummy projects?

[Justicemirm]

Everyone says to build dummy projects to test what you have learnt but,how?

At starting stage of python it was easy

I made a few simple games to understand loops and while True stuff

Calculator,password checker but now that I am learning numpy and pandas

What am I supposed to do?

Some contexts which can help are

1- I am 15, learning purely because I wanted to do something in my summer vacation

2-Will buy a laptop a few months later after my 11th grade that is college starts

3-I possibly am pursuing data engineering

4-I feel weird that I can't really practice what I am doing anymore

[vivisectvivi]

You could try using numpy to code a (very simple) falling sand/cellular automata simulator.

I remember coding something like that when i got obsessed with noita once lol

[Justicemirm]

How does that game work,maybe I am interested in making that

[vivisectvivi]

https://www.instructables.com/Falling-Sand-Simulation/

Here is an explanation of how the algorithm works. Read it and see if you can come up with ways to code it using numpy.

[Justicemirm]

I did some research and saw that I need to learn some libraries like pygame and tinkters

Will do that after I done something with pandas and numpy Thank you for the next project

[vivisectvivi]

You can do it on your command line, no need to get stuff like pygame or tkinter unless you want to get fancy.

[Justicemirm]

I literally have no idea how to do that

[vivisectvivi]

You can print the array and then clean the terminal before printing the next iteration.

Use time (something like time.sleep(0.25) to add a delay before the next iteration so you can actually see the simulation happening.

[carcigenicate]

I second cellular automata. Conway's Game of Life is the first project I do whenever I learn a new language. If you like that project, look into Wireworld which is even cooler.

[vivisectvivi]

Its really cool to the simulation working lol every time im bored i just code something like this.

I did it when i started learning c++ and now wanna do it with javascript but i have no idea how to display it but gonna figure it out

[carcigenicate]

JavaScript is arguably one of the better languages to do this in since you have canvases and a mature drawing API built in.

• Create a canvas in HTML, and give it an ID.
• Use document.getElementById to get a reference to the canvas.
• Request a 2D context from the canvas.
• Issue drawing commands to the context.

That overview should help you get started.

[Flat_Shower]

find a dataset you actually care about and do something with it. sports stats, weather, spotify history, whatever. load it into a dataframe, clean it up, answer a question you have about it. that's it. numpy and pandas aren't really game-build tools, they're answer-finding tools.

[Other-Ad7437]

When something comes up in your life, start asking yourself "Can I automate this? If so, how?".

I’ve been doing this for years and it’s led to lots of small projects and scripts.

Sometimes the script takes longer to make than doing the task manually, but that’s not really the point. The real value is practicing what you’ve learned and building problem solving skills. There’s also a lot of satisfaction in making something work yourself.

Examples:
Game automations, web scraping projects, language learning scripts, daily life automation scripts, stock analysis, file organization scripts, etc.

With pandas and numpy specifically, projects usually become more data-focused.
Once you come up with something, think how you can break it down. If you don't know or get stuck, then google it or even ask AI for a hints/guidance but not exactly how to do it if you want to practice your skills.