I need an idea

I need some ideas for a piece of software I can write. I want to do something that could actually be useful, or practical. I just want something else to fill out my "portfolio" and give me more experience, so I look more appealing to companies.

I want something that I can reasonably accomplish in 3 months.

I'm experiencing a sort of writer's block. I just can't think of any software that would be interesting.

Any ideas? Anyone?

 

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Just write a multi-thread client-server game, like a pacman, but that runs on a server and a certain ammount of users can logg in the game from a client installed on their PCs, like 15 simultaneous users would do it. And throw Lord of the Rings on the picture. Pacman could be Frodo, and the Ghosts are those horrible creatures of the movie.
You can be creative with the moves and shortcuts, special powers, whatever you want to throw in, depends on the time you have.
I guarantee you, dealing with the 15 simultaneous users in 1 server will give you the experience you need. Plus all the threads running simultaneously will make a mess in your brain, good for IQ increase you know.

 

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How about a timed math challenge program? A person has 60 seconds to complete as many addition problems as possible, with increasing difficulties that include subtraction, multiplication, division, and perhaps solving single variable algebra problems?

 

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How about an AI that plays Tic Tac Toe.

 

I once made a program that played the card game "War" with itself. I used macros to define rules how to shuffle the cards, how to collect "won" cards, etc. It consisted of I think 400 lines of code. What was the point? I collected statistical information about the game just to see what one could expect based on the hand one possessed. And by altering the rules that I mentioned above, I found that some games had absolutely no end... like there was some equivalence point.

I wish I still had the code

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Taken from a post I made about this before: "the player with the higher average of cards (average of the value of hand) had an average of a 57% chance of winning." That assumes that the collecting of the won cards was random.

 

Absane, that's actually a pretty interesting idea. I might do something like that (granted, it would only take a day or two). That might actually be fun.

Wisdom_Seeker, I like the idea of doing some sort of client-server project. I do need to brush up on my networking in C++. And yes, threads have always been a sort of stumbling block for me.

So I think I want some sort of multithreaded client-server application. But what exactly should I do? I'm not much of an idea guy, but once I have one, I can usually do it pretty well.

 

How about an application for managing songs on an iPod........including a program that mass-batch-processes album artwork into all songs ON the iPod.

Also make it so the program runs very quickly.

My current beef with iTunes and all the iTunes alternatives (like "Yamipod", and so on) is the fact that it doesn't write artwork into the songs in the iPod itself-----only into the songs located in the mp3 library on the computer. Not only that, but iTunes is slower than heck.

Also make the interface so that music can be easily drag/dropped

 

If you are interested in trading, I could use a programmer. PM me if it fancies you...

 

I had thought of this program-- I wanted to aspire to create it when I got good enough at programming:

Create a Tic-Tac-Toe program AI that operates through the maintenance of a database that keeps track of the win and loss percentage of each move.

For example, after playing, say 100, games the computer learns that most typically the move in the middle wins. It would learn to play the middle move. You could manage the moves in a SQL database.

It's interesting... because it would actually learn.

If you wanted the AI to learn very quick you can make two computers play against each other...

 

A software that restarts Windows in safe mode, opens the administrator's user profile, defrags C: once everything is loaded, schedules a disk check for the next time Windows restarts, and then restarts Windows. You'd be brilliant.

 

What kind of job will you be looking for?

I'm working on a primitive graphics engine, it's slow going but it's been a great side project. I'm hopeful I can get it to the point where it can create a short 64k graphics demo, which should help a lot in my quest to do graphics programming professionally. And it's something you can just keep improving as you go.

 

Depends what sort of vacancies you want to fill. Making games is fine if you want to join a games company (but they will require about 5 years experience and portfolio to match), If you want to look for jobs in a specific area then you need to look at developing tools for that area, tools that aid a specific job or have a few extra necessities over tools that already exist.

This way it doesn't just bolster your Resume but screams out you are capable in that particular area.

 

A spambot for SciForums.

 

But Nick, don't you think those unvocalised Luddites out there would suggest that a robot would be doing you out of a job?

 

Shhh! If its convincing enough, it can replace me seamlessly and I can retire. No-one would ever know, I mean they havent noticed so far.

 

Rubiks I could sure use a simple, Inventory asset management program. There used to be really good one's like "support magic" 10 years ago. Now everything is either enterprise software(plugging into everything, raping your network sniffing PCs and doing who knows what "behind the scenes"), or it's "free" and garbage - might as well use excel or access.

 

This is a good point. I definitely don't want to go into game design though. Other than that, it's pretty open right now. Later I might go into embedded systems, but for right now, I want to improve my regular old software development skills. Even if what I write isn't specific to the industry I want to be involved in, companies do care that I can actually start a project, and finish it. In all the career fairs I've been to, that's the big thing they ask - "what projects have been involved with?"

This would be interesting, because I've always wanted to write software that interfaces with other hardware. The problem is I don't have an iPod, so this would be damn near impossible.

Thanks for the ideas, guys. Keep 'em coming!

 

Tell me more about what this would do.

 

That's funny.
I HAVE an idea and need a good database/web programmer (I've been out of web developing for too long, and don't have the time to write this).

 

I wish I could help. I don't know much about web development, so I'm not ready to take on a web project. I've done a small project with Ruby on Rails and a mySQL database, but that's about it.