searching for inspiration

I've been programming for a while and know quite a bit now, but I have trouble coming up with ideas for projects. Sometimes, I'll even be in the middle of the project and then question why I started it in the first place and then give up. Does anyone have similar issues? If so, how do you deal with this?

I dealt with this by abandoning programming because I realized my heart just wasn't in it any more

>>27080 For me, the purpose of projects is to get hired in your chosen field. I wanted to be a crypto dev so I made a Bitcoin wallet, and now I do crypto full time, now I don't need to have a side project to work on what interests me.

Just stop programming a while and develop interests in something else. Once you have something else you're passionate about you will want to make programs that can be applied to that interest.

>>27081 Why are you on this board then?

Have a look at >>23062 It's a great thread for inspiration and could use some activity. Next time search the catalog before making a new thread please.

fuarrrk this beans overengineered soykaf its easier to make handcrafted recursive dependency injection through reflection than make this EJB CDI soykaf work with standard environment, fuarrrk

>>27085 sometimes people have interesting questions

I do this all the time, I think it's quite normal. That doesn't make it any less frustrating, however.

>>27080 same here lainon I think it's pretty normal. I've had projects that I've stuck with for a long time but if I come across a bug that's difficult to fix and I spend hours on it I start to question why even do this. I think it has to do with the fact that most of my projects are tools that I could find elsewhere, but there is some small thing that bothers me and instead of editing some foss project for personal use I'll start writing mine from scratch.

>>27080 Perhaps you should stop trying to make projects. Most programmers try to make things right away, and then they get confused and burnt out. It's better in my opinion to read. You ought to pick a seminal programming book and become intimately familiar with it. I would bet that after such an endeavor you will be in a completely different headspace. Such a book is Unix Network Programming by W Richard Stevens. I'm reading that one now (very slowly). Let me ask you this anon, do you consciously reflect on your life? It might be interesting for you to initiate a habit of spending 5 to 15 minutes reflecting every day. No noise, no distractions, just sitting on the floor or in a chair, reflecting. Reflect on what you're doing, why you're doing it. Be broad in your reflection, or drill down to minute details about programming languages. I would guess that you're not going to be able to answer most of your questions on your own. Look to those successful and prominent programmers & their stories in order to gain insight. These are just some thoughts from me. >>27101 I think it's dope to rewrite projects on your own. When people say "duurrr but you could just download this program durrr" it's like shut the fuarrrk up you normal person glitterboy, not everyone wants to just get their soykaf done, some of us possess the noble instinct to acquire understanding. Peon fuarrrk

>>27102 >some of us possess the noble instinct to acquire understanding. Peon fuarrrk this is definitely part of why I rewrite but again I come across a tiny issue that takes me longer than than a few hours and then I'm done. I really need to fix that about myself or I'll never have a portfolio of projects I can actually show to employers or clients. All my projects are half baked.

>>27080 Stop making things you don't care about. It feels pointless and unfulfilling.

>>27080 Everyone is different lain but I solved this by never having projects. Instead I have a task that I want my computer to perform and I write a program to do that. When I don't have a task I don't force myself into programming just for the sake of it. Regarding giving up, the more complex your task becomes the more likely you are to reach a point where you have something difficult to overcome. The way I personally work around this is by always breaking these up into smaller easier chunks. Once I have broken the task up I completely ignore the end goal and instead divert my focus to each of the smaller pieces. Its way easier to program something when the only thing in your mind is "I need to write a function that performs this small simple task". After you have written all these smaller simple functions the only thing left is the simple task of gluing them together.

>>27080 Write simple programs to solve simple problems. As an example, I wrote a Racket program to get running medians. It started as this small thing that worked from lists baked into the program itself and only output text. As I went I expanded it into a much larger program, complete with a GUI.

I was trying to create a general thread about idea donations about any subject, but I couldn't do it because my requests looked automated. So if you want to create this thread yourself I think it may help you(and me). My idea is simple, some people are creative but incapable of doing things, and other are extremely proficient in making things but aren't creative(almost like you), so by making the creative people donate ideas the proficient person would not have problems with creativity and the creative person would benefit from things being done. I think my explanation looks a bit confuse, but I guess it is understandable

>>27080 Whenever I think of things to create, I try and answer simple questions to determine if it's worth the time. Generally, those are: >What's a problem I want to solve? If there are no problems, what's something that can be done better? >Does the world need this? >Has it been done already? >Is it within my ability?

>>27252 <>Does the world need this? I don't think this is a very fair qualifier; yes it's a useful thing to make useful software, but software the world doesn't "need" like a fun video game is also a good idea.

>>27253 Yeah, that's a good point. Maybe instead it would be something like >Does the world need this, or is this something that either I or the world would want?

This is a serious problem and the root of the issue seems to be perfectionism. I stopped working on a mostly-complete c64 game because the code was becoming too disorganized. Now I can't seem to get started on any new projects. I start sulking because I realize how little experience I actually have and how unlikely it is I will ever make money etc doing any form of programming. This process repeats every several months.

>>27102 >You ought to pick a seminal programming book and become intimately familiar with it. Thanks, anon. I'll learn about Go error handling and start the Rust oficial book.

>>27256 If you're open to other suggestions, "Designing Data-Intesive Applications" by Martin Kleppmann is a great and easily-digestible read. It's maybe tangential to what you're trying to accomplish with programming, but I think the contextual knowledge it offers is extremely valuable.

>>27258 Thanks, anon. I'll read it instead.

>>27103 having encountered this issue before, I recommend making a tool to automate your bugfixing/Todo loop. I used to have one written for dash, it mostly enumerated to-dos and verified I'd checked in all my code, for a bunch of projects. I also had a mode to drop me into a shell in the project directory at any failing critical checks (like "is code checked in"). it's easy to do but you'll have to implement a minimal macro expander - quoting sh code such that it can be fed into commands like gnu parallel - if you want to paralize this process so it runs faster while also using sh functions to ease formatting and deal with \0 delimited path name processing.

>>27255 >>27277 Todo lists prevail over perfectionism. my current problem is not writing too messy code but too little code, I'm not sure how to remedy that yet so I'm listening for advice on how to write more code.

>>27275 It's more database-centric, so I wouldn't recommend it as your only reading material if application programming is your goal. It makes for an excellent sidekick to whatever language you're focusing on, though, be it Go or Rust or some other language.

I have had the same issue in the past and the only thing I've found that works for me consistently is to find new problems to solve by talking to non-programming people. It amazes me how much wasted human effort exists in workplaces despite proliferation of computers.

I think a good way to generate ideas is to look at the best software, think about how that software solves one part of its problems really well, then think about making new software with those stolen ideas in a different space. For example, the extensibility and interactivity of emacs is basically the best, so maybe you could think about why that is then make an application in another space with those same strengths, ideally with other stolen ideas. There's a lot of applications that do something really well, and they are just waiting to have their good ideas put into other software.

>>27278 >write more code automate, try to figure how to not write code, cut as many corners as you can, try to make the computer do everything for you, you should even try to get it to make full on applications for you, just do it step by step bottom up. like, I would recommend making a directory ~/bin, then make a file called 'make-me', then have it start making applications, files etc. for you up until the point where you need to customize them, and try to do this for everything else you do.

>>27094 What fills your heart with joy?

>>27189 I cannot believe Stallman is such a hypocrite. How can he claim to advocate for free software when he has not even made the source of his brain available? We have no idea what is going on in there. Are we supposed to just take his word for it? This clearly violates freedom 1. In regards to what the thread is actually about, I have the opposite problem. I have too much inspiration so I can never actually finish a single project because I have too much inspiration. But I would take >>27084 's advice. Most of my ideas come from interests I have outside of programming.

>>27345 i always forget that computers were built as tools of convenience. Going to give this a real attempt, thank you lainon

>>27345 I told you about code reuse, fools!

the >>26232 thread is C only so i'll post here - i always solve most immediate problems and when they're most-immediate but not highest priority i note them elsewhere to come back to right now for example kubernetes is a pain to confirm functional once you either grow out of minimal infrastructure complexity and/or when you have to move around and connect lots of things for the first time and there are no non-deploying test solutions as far as i can see - even if there were i'm slowly starting to believe that had the wheel not been reinvented we'd still be pushing/pulling carriages around - so i _have_ to build one for myself to me that sounds like a good starting point also this >>27344

>>27772 well this didn't take long, i have an attempt at a middleware-based framework (https://github.com/ap-oc/pypeline) which i turned into a template and used for a kubernetes simulator-type-thing which i intend to run tests against https://github.com/ap-oc/kutest both in python, which is like a third language to me

>>27751 >i always forget that computers were built as tools of convenience Now I'm curious as to how you see computers most of the time. Automating things is always satisfying no matter how little the optimization is. That's one redundant step less to perform in my life and I'm hella lazy.

>>27808 sometimes I see them as a necessary evil and other times I see them as objects of distraction, and frequently as objects of frustration. I agree, though; getting to apply your self to automating some process is very enjoyable. I'm not in the habit of doing it outside of 9-5 programming.

>>27102 I disagree. Knowledge without purpose is as useful as a purpose without knowledge. Both end up useless. The best approach in my opinion is running parallel. You try to solve a problem and learn as much as you can to deliver the best solution. That way you stay motivated the whole way and is better for memorization too. >>27165 >>27166 >>27172 All are good advice. Don't attempt to do stuff just because. Pick something that you find interesting and jump on board. I recently have committed to contributing to a language learning add on, and hosting both an informative website about a social cause and a productivity one. Automating small stuff is nice too. You need to start thinking "I could do it manually, but what if..." Which usually leads you to a small script, at least. The whole thing is drawing motivation from somewhere, as other lainanons have said, oftenly this comes from other interests. Go do something you like and think how could you make things better.

>>27172 >As an example, I wrote a Racket program to get running medians. It started as this small thing that worked from lists baked into the program itself and only output text. As I went I expanded it into a much larger program, complete with a GUI. That sounds familiar. I may have seen your project on Github.

>>27345 Do you mean like writing bash scripts to reuse functionality from existing programs, using pip libraries in Python, calling external programs from Python, combining all the aforementioned options within the same task (at least in some cases)? If so, I assume Automate the Boring Stuff with Python should be a good start at least. Is there a good way I could take automating further, once I've gone through that book? Like, additional topics not covered there. How does one cultivate thinking about automating tasks one otherwise might not think of automating, that yet would be useful, like perhaps tasks you'd otherwise not do because of how tedious they'd otherwise be, yet that'd have beneficial results? If you meant something else, what did you mean by making the computer make applications for you? I hope I'm not spilling soykaf here. >>27751 What are your findings since? >>28548 Mind sharing the language learning add on, in case there's no privacy concern for you?

If I don't know what to do, I will just learn new stuff.