3 Types of Projects That Will Make You a Programmer

you know how all of us youtubers are always telling you to go build projects and actually apply what you're learning well if you've actually tried to do this so if you googled something like programming projects to build you may have noticed there's an overwhelming amount of projects that you can actually build which leads you to that next dilemma which is okay which one should i build or why should i build this one over that one and it's critical that you answer this question correctly otherwise you're going to waste a lot of time so in this video i'm going to talk about the three different types of projects that you're going to want to build to put yourself in the driver's seat to get hired i'm going to go over the exact types of projects and why they're important with examples so you don't have that excuse of oh i don't know what to build or something like that so without any further ado let's dive in so diving right in here the three types of projects are really three levels of projects and i'm going to explain why each is important the first level of projects that you're going to want to work on are what i call simple projects by the way the term simple does not mean easy for some of you these projects might be very challenging some good examples that would fit in the simple category of projects would be something like a digital clock app right you literally just show the time and you show the second so you have to change every second maybe it would be something like a to-do app we all know about that where you can add to-do's and cross them off or an expense tracker where you can simply have a user add in expenses and show them in a table projects that fit this category are typically not always but typically either low in complexity meaning they do just one two maybe three things they are usually less than 200 lines of code sometimes they may be more but usually they're less they're pretty small applications and also they shouldn't use any libraries or frameworks in other words you really want to focus on the fundamentals you want to focus on syntax and problem solving this first level of projects is crucial to developing real programming skills and real foundation so yes you're going to learn about syntax you're going to apply a lot of what you're learning you're going to learn about control flow statements more important than that you're going to learn how to problem solve right so you're going to learn how to take a problem like building a project you're going to break it down into smaller parts work through each part and when something doesn't work you have to go back and debug and analyze your code and that's what really makes a programmer a programmer and that's where you're really going to get out of the first level projects i generally recommend building anywhere from four to eight projects at this level and by the way don't overdo this like don't add tons of really cool features don't spend tons of time making this look amazing just do the bare minimum to call this complete and by the way i will leave a link in the description of all different examples of projects types for each of these levels so definitely check that out now one of the simplest projects that you could actually take up right now actually doesn't even require coding it does however require that you go down below here and smash the subscribe button now this won't actually make you a programmer but you could try putting it on your resume and seeing how that goes okay so on to the level two projects which i like to call the intermediate level of projects now the key thing about this level of projects is that we're really increasing the complexity level some examples of projects that come to mind that could be categorized as intermediate are a lot of video games actually so space invaders you've got snake gain tetris game which is really challenging and then also something like pong would be pretty challenging as well beyond games there's something like the calculator app which seems simple but for a lot of people is really a definite step up and complexity down to something like a web scraper where you scrape craigslist let's say and maybe send yourself an email once a day with all of the available apartment listings as far as what actually defines an intermediate project i'll be honest with you this is sometimes very hard to figure out you know you may build a project and it'll be in that blurry line between the two but there are some basic qualities or rules of thumb that i find for level two projects the first thing i found is that they typically do five or more things so if you look at the tetris app there's a lot of things going on there right like there are a lot of different things that you actually have to do as a programmer same with the calculator there are a lot of different functions of it and usually if they do five or more that's a good sign now the next thing as far as lines of code actually the general rule is that it typically doesn't go over 500 lines of code so i actually don't think there's a good gauge here as well but just don't go over because usually if it goes over you might start bleeding into that next level which is a level three project the last rule of thumb here is that you'll have a minimal use of libraries or frameworks so you may use one or two to help you with certain things but you still want to work along the fundamentals and really work on handling all the complexity now how many intermediate projects should you actually build so i typically recommend building a minimum of three but if you find that you're going through these pretty easily maybe step it up a little bit and go with something like four or five or six just remember that the reason you're building these projects is to move into a higher level of complexity so that when you get into some of the more complex apps you're a little more comfortable so for those of you who can more practice may be better so on to the last level of projects here which is really the top level of projects which i like to call the capstone projects capstone projects really put everything together and have a very high level of complexity so applications like a social media clone right so a linkedin clone a twitter clone a facebook clone a instagram clone or even something like a slack clone like a chat app like a real time chat app or a discord clone or even something like a fake e-commerce store so just build an e-commerce store sell fake stuff you wouldn't actually sell anything but you get the basic idea these types of projects should put your skills to the test and most importantly they should give you real examples that you can bring up in an interview that you actually can do the work that hey this is how you know that if i come in i can actually do the work that's expected of me to me if you put a capstone project together you're likely worthy of getting hired by somebody out there what makes a capstone project a capstone project well there is no perfect definition for this but there are some general rules of thumb that you can follow the first thing is that they usually do 10 or more things now if you think of one of the examples i brought up like a twitter clone think of all the things that application actually does right so there's a registration process there's a login process there's viewing all of the tweets on your timeline there's posting new tweets there's sending direct messages there's retweeting there is liking there's quote tweeting i mean we could just kind of go on here i would say as long as it does 10 or more things that's usually a good sign another good rule of thumb for capstone projects is that you use integrations so it basically means different systems outside of your project right so if you're using like a front and a back end and on your website your application maybe you use a database right that would be considered an integration or maybe you use an external api or maybe even some external software that's running on that server on that backend server those are all integrations and they definitely would add to the complexity the next rule of thumb is that you should use multiple libraries and frameworks right so frameworks and libraries help you to do what you do as a programmer so you're not focusing so much on fundamentals but you're more focusing on how to use these libraries in real world projects another typical sign of a capstone project is that there are more than 500 lines of code because they're more complex and lastly and this is my advice here is that your capstone project should be interesting right so what i mean by that is you're going to put this on your resume and your personal portfolio site you want to grab a little bit of attention and i know this term interesting is subjective but just basically if you were to tell your friend your mom your whatever relative at thanksgiving dinner that you built this project they would go oh that's kind of cool that's interesting that's all you're aiming for now one thing i want you to notice here is that this pyramid of projects this section here is the smallest one compared to the other two because these projects will take the most time out of all the projects that you're going to build so you just can't build that many of them so what i typically recommend is that you build anywhere from at least one to maybe three projects with two being the absolute sweet spot at the end of the day i've seen people get hired with just a single capstone project but what you may want to try is build one test the waters go out and apply and if it doesn't really work out then go ahead and try to build a second one i've based a lot of what i just laid out here from working with many people in my mentorship program and in that program i've worked with a lot of different people to help change their careers everything from cooks to musicians to delivery drivers to help them land their first gig as a developer and while i want to make absolutely clear that this program is not for everybody if you are committed to making this career change and you do want to inquire about my mentorship program i will leave a link in the description below of how you can do that just keep in mind that i vet every single person who comes in the program so you will have to do a free intake call to see if it's a good fit so other than that that's all i've got and thank you so much for watching and peace out everybody

Channel: Andy Sterkowitz

Views: 8,334

Keywords: learn to code, self taught programmer, self taught software developer, andy sterkowitz, learning how to code, coding for beginners, web development, programming for beginners, how to learn to code, how to learn to code for beginners, programming portfolio, programming projects, programming project ideas

Id: RYE0QQKJI9o

Length: 8min 12sec (492 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 13 2021