DEV Community

George Offley
George Offley

Posted on

What are some ideas you'd like to implement, as personal, professional, or other types of projects?

Hey all,

I am swimming in a sea of ideas for projects to build in the languages I love. Some of them include creating a neural network to play video games, finishing my political app, and maybe a a series of CS articles using Python for examples. Just some stuff kicking around, what about all of you? No scruples just ideas!

Top comments (35)

Collapse
 
johnlukeg profile image
John Luke Garofalo

I'm working on a side project right now to benefit my engineering team process. We have a five man team and a mandatory code-review-before-merge rule. The only downside of this process is that we have multiple repos (some more popular than others) and we are so heads-down that we have a hard time managing all of our pull requests that need reviewing. So we came up with this idea for a PR queue where the PR's waiting for review the longest, get reviewed first. I built out a dashboard for this. It hooks into Github via web hooks and records our data into it's own data models. We can then use labels (i.e. needs reviewing) and other normal pull request events (i.e. merged) to control a state machine for each PR. I'm hoping to expand on it to fill in some of the other gaps in our process.

Collapse
 
ben profile image
Ben Halpern

This seems super useful. I'm kind of shocked this doesn't already exist built into GitHub.

Collapse
 
johnlukeg profile image
John Luke Garofalo

I'm kind of shocked this doesn't already exist built into GitHub.
This was our exact response. I suppose it is somewhat of a small-team specific problem. My Engineering VP ended up figuring out a query to type into the GitHub search bar to aggregate all of the PR's across the organization's repos, but there was no to tell at a glance who had been waiting the longest for a review.

It's also hooked up to web sockets for real time updates which is nice. I want to build it out more as gaps in our process arises.

After I began working on it, I found this article by Freek Van der Herten of Spatie, on an Engineering Team Dashboard which I've used to draw (read: steal) ideas from.

Thread Thread
 
mabdulsamadconfiz profile image
m-abdulsamad-confiz

How far have you reached on this project?
I would like to get involved :)

Thread Thread
 
johnlukeg profile image
John Luke Garofalo

Hey Abdul! It's actually still pretty young. Currently, it's just an internal project for my team, so there's no sort of scoping in terms of teams or users. I wasn't quite sure if the problem this is trying to solve is a common one amongst other teams, so I haven't put a ton of time into it. Once I'm able to add some scoping, you're more than welcome to get involved! Thanks for your interest, keep in touch.

Collapse
 
scheidig profile image
Albrecht Scheidig

I dream about an app for students to manage quizzes. Students would be able to design quizzes for a particular topic, using multiple choice, pictures etc.
Other students can take quizzes, crowd rate, like, vote and comment on it.
This is beneficial for both the quiz creators and the quiz users. And it makes learning university stuff fun, hopefully.

Collapse
 
scheidig profile image
Albrecht Scheidig

BTW. This would be open source. Anyone interested?

Collapse
 
ben profile image
Ben Halpern

I think this is a great idea for students. I'd try hard to strip this down to its most useful core and build on it with feedback from there. Things like this risk growing in scope. I'd try hard to keep a lid on that.

Thread Thread
 
scheidig profile image
Albrecht Scheidig

Thanks for the heads-up.
The problem for me is more the limited time I can spend on that. I think as soon as it gets drive I would have to flinch...

Collapse
 
georgeoffley profile image
George Offley

I'd definitely be interested in helping out!

Thread Thread
 
scheidig profile image
Albrecht Scheidig

Great!
Please join groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/stuq and introduce yourself.

Collapse
 
Sloan, the sloth mascot
Comment deleted
 
scheidig profile image
Albrecht Scheidig

Great!
Please join groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/stuq and introduce yourself.

Collapse
 
arsalancv2 profile image
arsalanc-v2

I'm interested to help out!

Collapse
 
scheidig profile image
Albrecht Scheidig

Great!
Please join groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/stuq and introduce yourself.

Collapse
 
rendall profile image
rendall • Edited

Have you reviewed the open-source or free quiz-makers out there? There appear to be a lot. What would distinguish yours?

Collapse
 
scheidig profile image
Albrecht Scheidig

This should be primarily available as a mobile app in the app stores. Students today do not own or use computers as I used to when I was studying back in the 90s. When I see my daughter using her smallish smartphone to read regular PDF science papers I have to keep me from hyperventilating. But I have to acknowledge that this is the current way to go, and we have an answer to this - reactive design.
So this would be mobile first.

Plus: the collaborative + the social gameing approach would be core.

I haven't seen something like this in the app stores - maybe I haven't looked sharp enough?

Collapse
 
ben profile image
Ben Halpern

In terms of political activism in the US, there is no better time to start working on a project that could affect the 2018 political midterms than right now. I find people tend to wait to think about these things until it enters the public conscience, but it takes a while to get software just right, so starting a simple idea with this time in mind could yield good results.

Collapse
 
walpolea profile image
Andrew Walpole

A fun one I keep coming back to is a social experiment type app where each day you're paired up with another anonymous user. You can send text/media, share your day, story, whatever. Digital daily penpal type thing. Maybe something where at the end of the day if you both mutually choose to carry the conversation into the subsequent day, you can.

Collapse
 
georgeoffley profile image
George Offley

Chat roulette? Maybe text only :p

Collapse
 
nonespoon profile image
Tsvetan Dimitrov

I'm really interested in the political app. Share something if you have.

I try so hard to come up with something usefull, but at the end nothing usefull comes to my mind, but I would love to participate in such a project, if you need devs you can count on me.

Right now I'm trying to build a neuro network that finds patterns in music, and generate new music based on what you have given it as input. It will basically follow the music rules and you will chooose from a variour dropdown menus, what genre you would like to get and what tempo and so on. The result will be a music that you can play on you device. :)

Collapse
 
georgeoffley profile image
George Offley

Well at the moment it's a portal where you would find your state and federal reps assigned to your district. Similar to a search on any government site, however you would sign up and login and see your reps, and you would get a breakdown of bills that they are voting for and how they voted. Completely take partisanship out by only showing what it is they do.

Collapse
 
nonespoon profile image
Tsvetan Dimitrov

My idea is to implement educational content, so if people know exactly what is the law. Full transparency.
I noticed people vote, but they don't really know what they're voting for. So from here I think we need to educate people. (:

Collapse
 
janetmndz profile image
Janet Mendez

I have been wanting to build a self-care app for the longest. I honestly just want to make it easier for users to find needed help when they need it at a moment's notice. Some features I have been thinking about are trackers and a journal.

I have been trying to learn React to build it with it but that might take me some time to fully learn.

Collapse
 
nektro profile image
Meghan (she/her)

I've recently had the idea that it would be cool if there was something akin to Electron (ie using JS to making native apps) but specifically optimized for a document where the only body element is a <canvas>. This program drop a lot of the unnecessary web APIs and be more robust in Image and Audio processing as well as giving lower level JS access to OpenGLish type functions.

Collapse
 
yaboibrooks profile image
Adincath

Working on a Cards Against Humanity Web App (Hopefully a PWA). Users would be able to pull out a phone at a bar with some friends or maybe in the middle of a road trip and start a quick game.

I'm really just trying to my feet wet with ReactJS and Redux, but more importantly go through and actually deploy an app with potentially a user base.

Collapse
 
ben profile image
Ben Halpern

I would work really hard on removing friction from the start a new game process or else people won't bother playing with it once the novelty wears off. I think the PWA is the right approach to take for this, but keep in mind that people really don't want to deal with even the most basic indirection, so try really hard to make starting a new game with some nearby friends REALLY EASY.

Collapse
 
rendall profile image
rendall

My next big fantasy project is the Facebook killer. Facebook brings so many wonderful things to the world: connection to long-unseen acquaintances; community organizing; updates from friends and family. The cost, of course, is placing our thoughts, ideas, memories, pictures, opinions and habits into a closed, for-profit ecosystem with dubious ethics and the tendency to meddle with the presentation of that content (and the content itself) like a scolding, self-serving parent.

Attempts to remake Facebook as another website will fail. Logging into a website held on private servers, in order to see / share / participate replicates the issues that Facebook has (e.g. 'Ello), no matter how ethically its owners would promise to behave, will have the same problems.

The only way to solve the problems of Facebook is to give every individual total control over their own content, and over the content feed they see. I'm talking about a paradigm shift in social media. I'm not talking website, I'm talking protocol.

So, my pitch is: Existing technologies such as RSS, open IDs and authentication, blogging software, etc, can, glued together the right protocol TBD, will allow individuals to have more control over their own data and identity, while still allowing all of the good that Facebook and social media actually brings to the world. Individuals host their own equivalent of the "Facebook wall" (or hire a host), and can subscribe to other "walls". Posting on your "wall" can have different levels of security - available to trusted audience or public, rather like Facebook is. Only, you own it.

Collapse
 
ben profile image
Ben Halpern

If I were going to try and build a Facebook killer, which is an incredibly difficult task, obviously, I'd try and somehow do it without the "screen". I don't know what the answer is, but I feel like the web/mobile app you scroll through model is something we can avoid in the future. If I want to keep in touch with those close to me, I can do it without all the damn screen time.

Ironically this is sort of what we built here with dev.to, but I do think it's the right "first version" of the community thing and is the right approach for less competitive territory, but the moonshot future (and in order to "kill Facebook", you have to think moonshots) is connectivity minus scrolling through a screen.

At least that's what I hope for. I also don't think VR (Another market Facebook will try to corner) is the right alternative, just the most potentially addictive one. The right solution has way fewer screens.

Collapse
 
rendall profile image
rendall

Agreed!

A free, open-source protocol that emphasizes interoperability and user control would allow devs to create any kind of client that suits them. Competing clients, and competing hosts, with competing revenue models, will lead to all kinds of UX solutions, not just the one handed to you by the hegemony. Those who hate scrolling such as yourself will create and gravitate towards clients that solve that.

I actually see this future - of a distributed social media - as rather inevitable, whether or not I work on it. The more that social media becomes essential to our lives, the less willing we will be to settle for our social networks and identities to be controlled by others.

Collapse
 
julienju2pom profile image
Julien Amsellem

Hi, sure it's an ambitious side project ! Here is an open source alternative to Tweeter that could inspire you: Mastodon

Collapse
 
rendall profile image
rendall

Yes! Amazing. Thanks!

Collapse
 
rebaiahmed profile image
Ahmed Rebai

i have an idea to develop chrome extension that scrap ads from website for ads , and recommend ads for user , i want to create recommendation system related to topics of the user
Other idea is to develop platform for enthusiast security "capture the flag" that provide lot a problems and contests related to programming , security , python ,script shell , having leader-board ,chat , real-time updating

Collapse
 
georgeoffley profile image
George Offley

The capture the flag idea sounds really cool. Been looking for a good online CTF solution for practicing.

Collapse
 
julienju2pom profile image
Julien Amsellem • Edited

My latest side project is a windows "Explorer" replacement application. What I'd like is to completely change how the user gets access to his "data" on disk. Forget about the classical tree view. I'm really focused on a new UX entirely based on "search" functions (that are blazing fast, nothing like the standard windows search).