Best projects to start coding
Tags: programming, webdev, beginners
Published: 2022-09-08 18:40:21

Looking back I wish I knew about this when I started coding.
Starting anything in life seems really complicated and even more if it's deciding what you want to have as part of your portfolio.
I've been talking to other people like me who decided to change careers and some of them picked to do a CS degree and feel they might not have any work to show. And that has been proved to be the best way to get the first job in tech. Said that I think there's no harm in learning CS fundamentals and a lot of the topics that people learn while doing a college degree.
##Portfolio
It seems odd starting here, but if you have no ideas it's a great start. It might seem odd if you don't have much but it's the perfect thing to build on plain HTML and CSS. It's also you can keep working on and will be a good exercise to practice new skills once you acquire them.
As always [FreeCodeCamp](https://medium.com/r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.freecodecamp.org%2Fnews%2Fhow-to-create-a-portfolio-website-using-html-css-javascript-and-bootstrap%2F) for the win. In that link, you can see examples of portfolios using HTML, CSS and Bootstrap.
[W3Schools](https://medium.com/r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3schools.com%2Fhowto%2Fhowto_website_create_portfolio.asp) has also a good few ideas on how to start and build a basic portfolio and also the theory you should learn about HTML syntax and structures.

##Games
Games are probably one of the hardest programming challenges you could face, but as with all challenges it comes with plenty of learning.
The second biggest project I built was a game in JavaScript and I don't think there's anyone better than Ania Kubow, here's a [video](https://medium.com/r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fselftaughttxg.com%2F2022%2F03-22%2Fania_kubow-tetris%2F) on how to build Tetris on JS. If you are more into Python, this [website](https://medium.com/r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Frealpython.com%2Ftutorials%2Fgamedev%2F) has great resources as well.

#To-do list App
This is good practice but also handy to use in your day to day! You can do a shopping list or a tasks list, anything that could suit you.
Again, W3Schools has their own [tutorial](https://medium.com/r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3schools.com%2Fhowto%2Fhowto_js_todolist.asp), also I found [this one](https://medium.com/r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DMkESyVB4oUw%26t%3D32s) interesting. But there are millions of them out there.
If you want to take it to the next level then you could try to build a Flask and MongoDB one, this [tutorial](https://medium.com/r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DxjHEcmjlD-Y) will help you to achieve that. For me getting started with Flask and MongoDB was a big learning curve.
I enjoyed building this one using [Python and Google Sheets](https://medium.com/r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DaVWJt7tigVw), getting exposure to Google APIs is always a good idea to familiarise yourself with how they work.

##API Project
This is something I didn't realise when I started but learning how to get data from APIs, and how to reshape it or use it will be a big part of your day to day job as a developer. The sooner you start the better.
For my current job, the technical challenge I had to complete was using [HackerNews](https://medium.com/r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%2F) Api data, making it look better and filtering by Top, New and Best Stories and adding pagination. Here's the [result](https://medium.com/r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fhacker-news-challenge.vercel.app%2F), if you are curious.
To give you some ideas, here you have [10 Fun Api Ideas](https://medium.com/r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fniall.af%2Fblog%2Ften-fun-apis-to-play-with) to play with.

##E-Commerce
Those kinds of projects are probably the most complex but also learning how to work with payment platforms such as Stripe, to pull a lot of data for the different products, personal areas, emails confirming the payments, etc. Will teach you a lot! Also, you could sell it to someone looking to have their own online business.
Here's a great tutorial you can follow to build a Python Django E-Commerce site.

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Thanks for reading, I really appreciate your time! 🎉 If you need any help please reach out!
If you have any questions feel free to drop me a message on https://medium.com/r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.linkedin.com%2Fin%2Fcarolina-cobo%2F or send me an [email](ccobo.dev@gmail.com). 😊
Have a nice day!