Computing project

[matty-guy]

I've almost finished college for the year and next year I'll be doing a computing project, where I have to make a program. Problem is i'm not too good with ideas. It has to be complex enough that it pushes me but not so much that it'll become some full blown personal project for me once its over. I was thinking along the lines of a music player or some sort of diary/planner kind of thing. Could anyone give recommendations that sound feasible and could be genuinely useful? Programming language will be java if that effects the kind of programs that sound do-able. Thanks.

[vandorjw]

How much programming experience do you have?
What program are you in? (what are you studying for?)

How much time do you have to complete it?
1 semester = 4 months? 2 semesters, or a full 12 months?

Where do your interests lie?
I cannot recommend that you make a small Application for android, if you dont own an android phone and know nothing about java.

[matty-guy]

How much programming experience do you have?
What program are you in? (what are you studying for?)

How much time do you have to complete it?
1 semester = 4 months? 2 semesters, or a full 12 months?

Where do your interests lie?
I cannot recommend that you make a small Application for android, if you dont own an android phone and know nothing about java.

I've been doing it for a year on and off now, wouldn't say I'm too experienced, but I want to do something that will make me learn new stuff, I'm planning on getting it started over my summer holiday (6 weeks) so I'll have quite a bit of time for whatever I need to know. The course is for my A-level in computing, don't know what the equivalent is there in Canada. I have about a year to complete it. I won't be able to do an android app because we don't have the android SDK on the school computers.

[DangerOnTheRanger]

If I recall correctly, the Android SDK is free, though you'd still have to install it.
I'd recommend one of the following:


A chess engine - fun to use, and involves lots of algorithm optimization and AI - I've done one before (as it was written in Python, it was slow compared to most chess engines)
A game engine - I'm coding one right now; I've been working on it for 3 years
A music player - I can't say I've done this, but implementing visualizations would be interesting
A window manager - Not kidding. I've never done this either, but there are some libraries to help you make your own (they're all Python-only, though)
A Jabber/XMPP IM client - not too hard, many libraries to help you with this

I've done half of these, and I can tell you they aren't all that difficult; you'd probably even finish more than one over the course of a year.