Coding is only 50% coding. There’s documentation, collaboration, and version control. Believe it or not, if you’ve been coding for more than a few weeks, you’re ready to publish. You don’t need specialized skills if you have specialized knowledge or just a willingness to “dig in” for a few hours. Here’s a small project of mine: https://github.com/ShayHill/paragraphs. This project is much more documentation that code, but I use it all the time, and it’s there for me to install from anywhere whenever I need it.

Here’s my 50+ and growing list of beginning project ideas

• Interesting Enum (e.g., Chinese Emperors). Anything canonically named and ordered is well expressed as an Enum. Save the rest of us a little coding and a lot of research
• Elaborate or fun predicates: Can a 16-bit value be converted to 8-bit without loss? Would a stack of n bricks be bigger than a bread box, but smaller than a billy goat?
• Sort items and keep track of original item index. This is an important first step in several algorithms
• Convert to fictional or archaic measurements (e.g., Roman digitus, gradus, passus)
• Permutations of a multiset. Vincent Vajnovszki has a great algorithm
• Dropped-object impact calculator. How hard and how fast did it hit?
• Vocabulary check against a favorite novel or author (e.g. identify words Melville didn’t use)
• Spline interpolation
• Yield only even or only odd permutations. The most common use for this is probably constructing polyhedra
• Count combinations with duplicates. How many ways can I line up four red vases and three green?
• Generate and format tests from a question bank
• Roman numeral converter. Yes, we still use these in MMXXI
• Map function that works with a specialized dataset, e.g., map(distance_to_library, coordinates)
• Approximate Bézier curves with circular arcs
• datetime (datetime is a Python library; every language has an equivalent) output in some ancient or fictional calendar
• Odds calculator for 2 * D20 + 4 style gaming rolls
• Strip or replace all non-ASCII characters from a string–sorry, Björn
• Give max height and distance of a projectile given initial speed and trajectory
• Integer to base-26 (Excel column numbering) converter
• Approximate oxygen percentage at a given altitude.
• Call an external command-line program (e.g., grep). Collect and parse output
• Build an html table that fits perfectly in a WordPress (or whatever) blog
• Iterate steps in a sorting algorithm
• Parse a module to create an argument glossary from the docstrings
• Break long text into n-character lines (or tweets)
• Partition a list based on a function
• Use introspection to create an output-file header with calling function, arguments, etc.
• Clustering algorithm.
• Sudoku solver or puzzle generator
• Reformat multi-line strings
• Recursive integer division (e.g., rediv(20, 6) => [3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4])
• Equivalent of Manhattan distance on hexagonal tiles
• Palette generator from a given color
• Rolling averages
• Solve triangles
• Generate output file revision numbers
• Useful filter functions (see Python’s attrgetter)
• Fetch temperature from somewhere on the Internet
• Parse module and create test functions to assert output type hints
• Triangle centers (if you’ve never looked, there are more than you think)
• Remove list duplicates, preserving order
• Pig Latin text converter
• Casino game odds reference
• Die Roller
• 4-dimensional rotation
• Switch between geometric plane definitions (3 points, point-normal form)
• Normal distribution cdf (without scipy or similar)
• Integer partitions
• Check for set/dictionary membership before adding element
• Capitalize strings as you would book titles: most words capitalized, articles lowercase
• Fetch conversion rates and convert currency
• Automate some other complex library call with sensible defaults
• Randomly generate names in a fictional language
• Approximate length of twine given a twine-ball diameter
• Algorithmically generated computer wallpaper