Beginner projects

Hi my friends!

I have been coding in a scripting language called Autohotkey for a while now, and the way i self taught that language was that i thought of a program that i wanted to have and started reading on the manual asking myself "how do i do this...? ok, ok... and how do i achieve that?" and it has turned out to have helped me greatly!

Now i want to learn C++ and i am trying to come up with an idea of a program not too easy to build but not extremely hard so that i can get the hang of it.

So i have a quick question for you:
What was your first beginner project? please share your experiences on it too if you like.

I think it might be an interesting thread and it can even turn out to be a pool of ideas for beginners like me looking for a project we could start on. :)

As a side question:
Are there any sites dedicated to share ideas of potential programming projects?
I am not aware of any.

Well sorry for the long post, hope you made it and I am eager to hear about your experiences!

to mods: I was not sure if i should post this in general forum but it is targeted to beginners so i ended up dumping it here

Most fun beginner projects are usually games. Here, you don't need to struggle with the problem but with the code alone. You could go for some self-evolving project, e.g:

Start with some small dice rolling game, roulette or something similar. Plain text I/O for now. Maybe using C-Style programming (skip the classes)
Add some opponent (AI)
Add some Highscore/Savegame options
Rewrite the whole thing using C++ (now you want a player class and you don't care how many folks participate)
Add simple graphics (SDL for example and thereby learn how to interact with libraries other than standard cpp)

Just a thought...if you're not interested in graphics you might look into other stuff thereafter...

closed account (o3hC5Di1)
Hi there,

If you're looking for inspiration you can always have a look at these links:

http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/articles/12974/
http://www.spoj.pl/problems/classical/

ZED0815's advice is pretty good in my humble opinion.
I would advise to stick to command line for a while , gui's and graphics are not exactly the easiest thing to learn in the beginning phases.

Hope that helps.

All the best,
NwN
I am personally not afraid of going in to more complex stuff since thats how i get motivated to learn on a specific topic. e.g. i need to do a gui to get some imput from user, then i go running on to the manual and read how to create gui's and so on.

I still understand your point. I think a little game will come up handy. Lurking the forum i heard about "the game of life" or something of the sort, any ideas on that?

thanks for the replies!
closed account (o3hC5Di1)
Hi there,

I'm not saying you shouldn't pick challenges, I'm saying you should choose projects smartly.

If you want to learn how to swim, jumping into the deep end straight away is usually not the best option. :)

There's a learning curve to everything, so try and enjoy it is all I'm saying, rather than getting frustrated on stuff that might too complicated.

Have fun learning and all the best,
NwN
I started from reading a book about C++ to the end, and had read a book about classes. And only than started my first project. It was calculator class. http://cplusplus.shinigami.lt/2012/04/05/17/
Don't try the game of life just yet. It's a simple program if you have a decent handle on the language, but it's probably not something you'd be ready to start on. One option I've seen suggested for such posts is Project Euler. It's a pretty challenging way to start, but some of the beginning ones don't require much programming knowledge. Project Euler can be coded in any language as well, so you can work on it with c++ as well as Autohotkey (maybe).

http://www.projecteuler.net

The way I started learning, however, was by making calculators where the person entered numbers and chose what function they wanted to do. This will teach the basic skills needed in all programs, but it probably won't be as difficult or as fun as the game option. Starting off calculators will also probably not be as good as Shinigami's (Go Bleach!).
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hahaha!
very well, actually those resources posted here are amazingly good, im kind of liking SPOJ lets see how far i can get in there :D

will take a look at projecteuler.net later on.

@NwN
I sure got your point man. I was just kind of saying that you dont have to not give me a resource cause you think it would be too advanced for me... im a very adventurous person :P
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