Starting With Code: 5 Easy Project Ideas for Beginners + 2 Bonus Projects

Building your first “programming project” can be both exciting and daunting. Whenever I feel intimidated by a daunting project, I remember something a good friend told me a while ago.

“The beauty of programming is that the size of the project really doesn’t matter all that much. From the most complex steps to the rather simpler functions, you can break down everything into three components: front-end (input/output), back-end (methods), and database. That’s it.”

I have handpicked five easy-level project ideas that every aspiring coder should make to kickstart their coding journey. Additionally, if you’re up for the challenge, I have included two bonus projects. They’re not gonna be easy, but they’ll be worth the effort.

Each project is chosen to introduce essential programming concepts and apply them in real-world scenarios.

1. GUI Project – Game

Starting with a GUI-based game project is an excellent way to get knee-deep in all the important concepts. Yes, it will take you longer to complete this project if you’re still at the printing “Hello World” stage. But I see that as a good thing.

You’ll learn about the most fundamental programming aspects by completing a GUI project from scratch. You’ll also learn error handling and Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) principles like classes, objects, and more.

Games are interactive, requiring user input and dynamic responses, making them ideal for understanding how code translates into action.

My Advice:

Generally, people go with Sudoku for their first GUI project. For some reason, it’s extremely popular as a showcase on your GitHub regarding job applications, but I would recommend against it. Sudoku is a complex game to understand, which could be unnecessarily time-consuming.

I recommend you build two games. The first is a choice between the classic Snake game and Tic Tac Toe. And the second one is Pong.

Project Steps:

1. Design the Game Interface: Layout the visual elements using the GUI toolkit of your choice.
2. Implement Game Mechanics: Code the game’s rules, movements, and interactions.
3. Add Controls for User Interaction: Allow players to interact with the game using keyboard or mouse inputs.
4. Implement Logic for Winning & Losing: Define how the game ends and what happens when a player wins or loses.

Extending the Project: Once you have a basic version running, you could try adding features like high scores, levels, or increased difficulty settings to make the game more engaging.

2. Web Scraper Project – Price Tracker

I believe web scraping is one of the most fundamental skills every programmer should have in their arsenal. Your first foray into the world of data extraction can be pretty amazing.

When I first learned of BeautifulSoup in Python, I was scraping every website I wanted to read articles on just for fun.

In this project, you’ll create a tool that visits a specific URL to automatically check and record the prices of products or services. Your program will ask you for the URL, visit the page, and get back to you with a price.

Project Steps:

1. Choose a Product to Track: Decide on a product whose prices you want to track.
2. Identify the URL: Find and set the URL of the product page.
3. Extract Price Data: Write code to navigate the HTML structure of the page and extract the price.
4. Set Up a Scheduler: Implement a scheduling mechanism to check the price regularly.
5. Notification System: Optionally, create a system to send notifications (like an email or SMS) when the price drops to a certain level.

Extending the project:

You can extend / enhance this project in three ways:

• Handle potential issues like changes in the website’s HTML structure.
• Extend functionality to incorporate complex notification systems using e-mail, SMS, or IM (Telegram).
• Learn simple database management (ideally JSON) to store product URLs and ease-of-use access the next time you open the program.

3. Notification Project – Weather App

Building a Weather App as a notifier project introduces you to integrating external APIs and creating automated notification systems.

This project will harness OpenWeatherMap’s API to fetch real-time weather data based on your geographic location. The goal of this project is to find out the predicted weather for the day and figure out whether you need to carry an umbrella before heading for work.

If it’s rainy or too sunny outside, the program will then notify you of the same. If you want to email yourself, that can be done using Python’s libraries or any other programming language.

However, I recommend you take your API game up a notch. You should use Twilio’s API to send you an SMS text or Telegram’s Bot API to send you an instant message.

My Advice:

Use the in-built functions to slow down your code like time.sleep() in Python. You’ll be on a free tier on all these, so take it easy. That way, you’ll encounter the least amount of errors.

Extending the project:

• Implement additional features like long-term weather forecasts or severe weather alerts.
• Explore more complex notification options, including integrating with IoT devices such as smart lights or thermostats to react automatically to weather changes.

4. Data Science Project – Social Media Analysis

By now, you already understand API usage and web scraping which will make it easier for you to jump to the next step – natural language processing (NLP).

Social Media Sentiment Analysis project is about extracting and analyzing the sentiment behind words used in social media posts to gauge public opinion on various topics, which is particularly useful in fields like marketing, politics, and public relations.

You will use Python and its libraries, such as NLTK (Natural Language Toolkit) or TensorFlow, to help you process text data. Next, you’ll use tools like Matplotlib or Seaborn to visualize the results for user interpretation.

Project Steps:

To successfully undertake the Social Media Sentiment Analysis project, here are the structured steps you can follow:

1. Choose a Platform and Topic: Select a social media platform (Twitter, Reddit, etc.) and a topic or hashtag to analyze.
2. Set Up API Access: Obtain necessary API keys from the chosen platform.
3. Data Collection: Use the API to collect posts, comments, or tweets related to your topic. Store the data in a suitable format for analysis.
4. Data Preprocessing: Clean the data and apply natural language processing techniques to standardize text (tokenization, stemming, etc.).
5. Sentiment Analysis: Implement NLP models to determine the sentiment of each text entry (positive, negative, neutral).
6. Data Visualization: Create visual representations of your analysis using libraries such as Matplotlib or Seaborn to show sentiment trends.
7. Interpretation and Reporting: Analyze the visual data to draw conclusions about public sentiment. Prepare a report or presentation to summarize findings and insights.

Extending the project:

• Develop the ability to track sentiment over time to identify trends.
• Expand the project to compare sentiment across different platforms or between competing products or brands.
• Implement machine learning models to improve the accuracy of your sentiment classifications.

5. Server / Networking Project – Homeserver

The homeserver project is one of my all-time favorites. A home server is something you never knew you needed until you finally built one.

If your current machine is big and powerful enough, you can create a VM (virtual machine). However, I recommend firing up an old laptop or desktop. If you’re willing to invest, you can get second-hand or refurbished rigs for as little as 80 to 100 euros.

In this project, we’ll install Ubuntu Server on this machine and build a home server. You’ll learn about network configurations, data management, and data security.

On your home server, you can install several apps (including some of your coding scripts) to run indefinitely. You can install Plex with ideal download clients to completely remove your need for a streaming service. Or you could install NextCloud to replace your need for Google Drive or Apple’s iCloud.

There are endless things you can do with your home server. Here’s a snapshot of my dashboard:

Extending the project:

• Enable public access via reverse proxy to access your server outside the home network. Be very careful about your security measures.
• Explore virtualization with Docker, allowing you to run multiple applications in containers for better resource utilization and isolation.
• As you become more comfortable, delve into orchestrating containers with Kubernetes, enhancing your skills in managing complex containerized environments.

Now, let’s move on to the two bonus projects.

6. Full-Stack Development Project

Building an entire website from scratch can be incredibly rewarding. A website (or web app) is something we interact with every day, all day. And being able to build and host one on the Internet will give you an ego boost like none other.

You will start by purchasing hosting services and setting up a server. You can get it cheap through a service like Hetzner or for free by signing up for services offering joining credit like Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon AWS.

Next, you’ll install a Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress or Drupal, which will act as the backbone of your site. The final step involves designing and customizing your website using JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.

Extending the project:

• Integrate advanced features like an e-commerce platform, interactive forums, or user profiles.
• Optimize the website for SEO to increase visibility.
• Implement analytics to monitor and improve user engagement.

7. API + SQL Database

This project will teach you how to create and deploy a simple RESTful API that interacts with an SQL database, providing a foundational understanding of backend development.

For this project, you’ll develop an API using a framework like Flask or Express, connected to an SQL database. This API will perform basic CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations on the data stored in the database.

You’ll then enhance the API to communicate with your home server, allowing for local data retrieval and manipulation.

Project Steps:

1. Setup Development Environment: Install tools and libraries such as Flask for Python or Node.js with Express for JavaScript.
2. Design Database Schema: Create tables in your SQL database to store your data.
3. Build API Endpoints: Develop endpoints to handle requests for creating, retrieving, updating, and deleting data.
4. Test API Locally: Use tools like Postman or Swagger to test API endpoints and ensure they interact correctly with the database.
5. Connect to Home Server: Modify the API to fetch or send data to your home server, enhancing its functionality.
6. Deploy API: Optionally, deploy your API on a cloud platform or locally on your home server for real-time data handling.

This project solidifies your skills in handling databases and servers and prepares you for more complex software development tasks.

Extending the project:

• Extend the API to other services or APIs. You could connect your API to third-party services like weather data or IoT devices within your home.
• Develop a web or mobile interface that interacts with your API, providing a user-friendly way to access and manipulate the data.