What should i try to build/write to improve ?

Question

Everyone I know is telling me that the best way to learn to code is to code. I'm always suggested to try and make something and that will teach me a lot of things, but I don't know what to build or where to start from, I don't have that much to work with (I'm literally just starting out in Python) and I'm not that creative. So I don't know what to build to improve myself, does anyone have suggestions ?

Answer 1

My first thought up project was a simple, text command-based database manager - it opened, read and appended files and stored, added and deleted data inside text files.
Although pretty simple, I learned a lot while coding it.
If you need inspirations, you might try out doing assignments on Sololearn -- they are of different difficulty and you can easily find your match.

Answer 2

I started by reading a book and in the meantime looking in my own life for things that were inconvenient and could be automatized.

I began with a vocabulary trainer, a calory calculator, a bodyweight tracker and a word pool program that returns data like what percentage of a given text is occupied by reps of a certain word, makes sorted text files of that and so on. For what I couldn't yet do, I asked google (and also the nice people here :-) ).

The advantages of looking in your own life for a challenge: You already know what you want and only need to look for the how; you are motivated because you relate to the job; if a problem is still too hard for you, it doesn't simply go away - you do something easier first and keep the hard thing for later.

So what simple but somewhat annoying matter could you commission your pc or smartphone with? Keep track of what is in your refridgerator? Work with data of your household's ins and outs? Store your contact data in a way you like?

Answer 3

I suggested a text based adventure because you can start small and build on from there.
A more simple task might be to calculate the fibbonaci series.
One more option that is still a little challenging is to calculate an approximation of pi using the Monte-Carlo method. See https://academo.org/demos/estimating-pi-monte-carlo/ for an excellent example.

Answer 4

Write a text based adventure! (Search "Zork" online for an idea)

Answer 5

Tavi Kohn That seems a bit too advanced/complicated for me, are you sure there's nothing simpler ?

Answer 6

Thank you everyone, definitely have some things to consider now !