First Python Project

[oli_action]

Hi everyone,

I completed the python beginner and intermediate level tutorial and I want to start working on my own projects. Easier said than done! I am really struggling to start a project on my own. I feel every time I have an idea I am unable to execute it properly.

What type of projects should I be focusing on at my level and if I can't do it then do I have to start over?( I want to avoid this "tutorial purgatory" everyone is raging about). So what exactly is the right approach to this?

I was also wondering if you could share your experience and talk about your first ever python project you did on your own? What did you do and how long did it take? What was the most difficult part about it and did you complete it? How much did you really do on your own without using the internet? Thanks. Looking forward to reading your stories.

[BlivetWidget]

Hi Oli. This is a difficult question to answer because you need to select something that's interesting to you. You need to pick things that capture your imagination, figure out what you can accomplish with what you know, and then figure out how to learn what you do not yet know. The most important part of a coding project is breaking it down into pieces you understand - this is completely independent of knowing how to write code. Writing code is easy. Figuring out what you're actually trying to do is the hard part.

I can suggest a few little projects that I think are both fun and small enough in scope to not be overwhelming for someone with limited experience. But only you can know what interests you.
-morse code translator, using . and - for dot and dash.
-webcomic downloader: point it to your favorite webcomic and tell it how far back/forward to go.
-abacus generator: one that can work in arbitrary bases to improve your understanding of number bases
-letter frequency analysis on texts in Project Gutenberg. Some say you can distinguish authors from their letter distribution...
-matrix manipulation: if you can transpose, flip, rotate, and overlap matrices, you can build a tetromino game.

Or anything else that interests you. Just remember there's no need to create some kind of pretty "app" for your first - or any - project. That's a direction you can go if you want to, but it's not the only direction. 95% of my own code is for small, fun/useful scripts that address a specific interest/need and nothing else.