Do you know what’s funny about Finding a Project to Work on to Gain Experience? It has NOTHING to do with web development at all! SERIOUSLY!
Let me explain why..
Web development is basically a tool to solve a problem. I think we all agree on that.
It’s almost like Problem vs You (web developer).
Say you wanna sell products online? you could use WordPress’ Woocommerce plugin to solve that problem.
You wanna build a site that displays 5 latest post from your favorite subreddit? you could use Reddit API to fetch the 5 latest post within that subreddit.
You wanna build a system to manage Contacts? you could build a small CRM system (Salesforce is an example of CRM)..
You wanna collect details from people about something? you could use Google Forms (or create your own forms and store that info in your own database).
You want users to be able to pay on your custom site? you could use Stripe checkout or API to accept payments..
ARE YOU STARTING TO SEE A PATTERN HERE?
Notice how we always start with a problem? ALWAYS.
That’s where you should start… if you wanna find real project!
Start with something you’re interested in..
Are you into health and fitness or a sport or sales or management or accountancy or forex trading or blockchain or science or electronics or cooking or anything at all..?
No matter what your interest is.. start there.
Build something that’s related to that.
If you’re NOT interested in accounting, DO NOT attempt to create accounting software. You know nothing about accounting. What will you build? 2+2 = 4 application?
Lifewise if you know nothing about Crypto, don’t write Crypto software. .
Running out of things to build
There will be a time when you’ll tell yourself what to do next.. this WILL happen. So what can you do about it?
The reason you’re gonna end up in this situation has NOTHING to do with programming. You not knowing what to build is a separate issue.
This WILL be solved by gaining deeper knowledge about the problem you’re solving or whatever you’re interested in.
Say you’re building a Health Software that takes weight, height and gender… it calculates the calories you should consume daily. If you know as much as I know about calories and human body you WILL be done here. You’ll pat yourself in the back. “I DID IT”.
You may feel you’ve built something big but again you’ll end up asking what do I do next..
Don’t you feel like you stopped because you don’t any better than applying a simple formula to calculate calories needed?
What if you KNEW that the calories needed can be different for each person based on their lifestyle? Well, if you did you’d add that option too, wouldn’t you..? then take that into account before you show the final result.
See where I’m getting with this?
IF YOU’RE WORKING FOR SOMEONE ELSE, YOU DON’T NEED TO WORRY ABOUT THIS! THEY WILL HAVE KNOWLEDGE OF THEIR PRODUCT/PROBLEM.
But because you’re teaching yourself you must have a problem/have knowledge in something other than programming. THEN you write the solution in programming.
An important note here:
You don’t need to be an expert at something other than programming. You just need to know a little bit. You learn as you go.
The main purpose here is to continuesly work on more and more complex code without being told by an employer what to do next (obviously because you don’t have a job and you’re a beginner).