Ask HN: How do you come up with progressive project ideas?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12312759

by kanso • 10 years ago

25 17 10 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I program inside and outside of work. As some of you, I absolutely love learning, creating, and problem solving. I am how ever at a point with my job where I no longer feeling as though I am growing. I feel static and I need more challenge.

My problem is that I am having a hard time come up with a meaningful project to take on. Are there any methods, or strategies to find an area no one has touched? I always see blog posts, or github repositories of awesome projects other developers create / contribute to.

How do I find something like that? Something that is relevant & beneficial to my growth as a programmer?

onion2k• 10 years ago

Look for pain. Listen to people complaining. Measure things and look for repetition. Those things are sources of easily identified problems (but not necessarily easy solutions).

taprun• 10 years ago

Here's a challenge: discoverability. There are a lot of unknown but talented people in crowded fields (fiction writing, software engineering, cooking).

Write some software to make them easily found that can't be taken over by spammers and fakers.

It's a hard problem, but if you can solve it you will be a hero to many.

cableshaft2• 10 years ago

Anyone who can take this on in a better or with a different approach to what already exists would be greatly appreciated to creators. I'm one, and I've been frustrated with the state of many discovery engines out there.

I've been toying around with the idea of some sort of P2P discoverability engine myself, but I don't really have the time or energy to really tackle it myself.

Just improvements on a 'recommendation algorithm' isn't enough, to me. You need to provide many, many vectors to get from one piece of content and discover something else. The more direct connections, the better, kind of like a wiki, but focused on community provided connections.

It's kind of like when I'm looking for new games for a console and I search "Top 10 games for blah" and check a bunch of list or "Underappreciated gems for blah" and check a bunch of lists, hoping for something I haven't seen before. Well what if there could be associations for just about any aspect of the content. Maybe the nodes could be auto-weighted based on how many people follow that connection, so anyone could add a connection, but the most travelled would rise to the top when a bunch of people click on it, possibly with some sort of extinction.

Anyway, it'll probably never materialize, it's just something that's been rolling around in my mind for awhile.

kanso2• 10 years ago

Doesn't this sort of already exist? Dribbble for instance, you can have followers and usually the top artist have tons of activity through comments on their content. You can easily find these top artists through their search filters.

miguelrochefort• 10 years ago

Let me tell you about my issue.

There are too many apps and websites. This makes life so complex. I want a one-stop interface that let me do everything.

Build it and you will win.

randomnumber314• 10 years ago

Isn't that what AOL and Yahoo did?

askafriend• 10 years ago

This is WeChat in China.

eswat• 10 years ago

Whatever you come up with will be a remix of things you've experienced in life, from actual things you've done to conversations you've had. If you want a breadth of ideas then having a breadth of experiences is one solution; talk to different people, visit different places, read different books and even change how you experience those (try an audiobook or speed reading if you’re used to reading a book at a leisurely pace).

Once this starts collating in your head you can brainstorm ideas on your own or in a group. One caveat is that ideas in this early stage should not be filtered: think of something, write it down, repeat. I’ve seen far too many brainstorm and public discussions drum up ho-hum solutions to problems because taboos and political correctness got in the way of interesting ideas. Such ideas may be stupid or even offensive but they can be a catalyst for much better solutions.

hbcondo714• 10 years ago

I've used up-for-grabs.net to help find open source projects that have open issues to work on.

kanso2• 10 years ago

This is awesome, thanks! Are there more sites like this?

tmaly• 10 years ago

I always look for something that requires too much time to do or something that is very manual in nature. I ask myself how often I do this, and if it is often enough, I consider it.

Even if you see something that looks like you are interested in building, they could have solved it in a completely different manner than you would have. There is still some merit in taking on the challenge yourself.

nekopa• 10 years ago

Regarding your first point:

https://xkcd.com/1205/

dnh44• 10 years ago

Highly quality inputs are important. Books, films, YouTube, whatever. Go for walks. Spend more time alone and day dream. I think day dreaming is important. Try meditation, or consider smoking cannabis, but if you do do it alone.

JSeymourATL• 10 years ago

come up with a meaningful project to take on.

Three areas to explore -

1) What are the most important problems in your field?

2) Are you working on ONE of them?

3) Why not?

On this subject, Richard Hamming offers excellent advice > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1zDuOPkMSw

Mz• 10 years ago

Do volunteer work. Start a new hobby. Read things different from what you usually read. Etc.

You need to a) feed your mind/feed your creative engine and b) put yourself in contact with new problems.

Ask HN: How do you come up with progressive project ideas?

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