3 small projects to help you build big applications.
Tags: webdev, beginners, programming, learning
Published: 2024-05-21 21:39:20

Remember the days we all started to learn how to code and we were always told to learn the basics first? Well turns out our teachers and YouTube instructors were right, it's important to master the basics but "how to master the basics" is the question we need to ask ourselves. And in this article, I will try my best to give a response to the why.
Honestly, coding only starts to make sense when you practice; and here are three small projects that will help you solidify your basics and, give you the ability to code more complex applications. 


### To-Do list App
I like to call it "the almighty To-Do list App". This is by far one of the most popular applications you will be asked to build as a beginner and it makes sense trust me.

- Context: 
This application will require you to create, read, update and delete your To-Dos or tasks.
 
- What you learn:
How to manipulate the DOM, how to handle events and use `localStorage` for data persistance.

- The stacks:
HTML, CSS and JavaScript for beginners or React and Express for more advanced developers who want to build a more complex App.

- Bigger Apps inspired by it:
Ok, this is where I get very creative but when I look at project management tools, I can't help but to see that even though they are very complex, the principle remains the same. Even though they organise work very well, they are all about creating, reading, updating and deleting tasks. To me, they are very big To-Dos Applications.

### Weather App
Yep, this is another star of the show in the developer community. If you just learn JavaScript, you've got to know how to work with API an display the data very well.

- Context:
This application will show us how to consume API in other words, it will help us use the data someone has made available to us to use via a program that they have written. We could go deeper in defining what APIs are but that is besides the point. All we know here is that there is data somewhere and we want to display it in our App.

- What you learn:
How to use the Fetch API from JavaScript, how to work with endpoints, understanding HTTP Methods, handling errors and much more.

- The stacks:
HTML, CSS, JavaScript for a start and add frameworks of our choice for more complex applications.

- Bigger Apps inspired by it:
Honestly, all weather Apps are the same. One of the big difference is that most of the biggest Apps can do forecast. But yes, once you have learned to do a small weather app, you can do more complex ones.

###Chat App
Last but not least, we have the chat app aka the most complex amongst all. This application consists of sending and receiving messages in real time and to do that, we will need to learn more than we already know.

- Context:
Allow you and your friends to exchange messages instantly.

- What you will learn:
How to manage user sessions, webSockets, servers, user interface and this is valid for a simple application. It can get more complex.

- The stacks:
HTML, CSS, JavaScript, NodeJS etc. 

- Bigger Apps inspired by it:
No matter what messaging platform you want to use, it will always be the same principle. We would want to see how many users we can chat with, we would want to see our past conversation so we can follow the conversation. This application can even be part of a bigger application as a functionality. So it's a very important app to build at the beginning of our career.



That is it mates for the post. I know we have all had advices on what to build when we get started with in tech as a developer so share below some applications you found useful to learn when you got started. Watch out for this place as we will build these projects here on this platform.