Final Year Project

SoItsMe

I am starting my fourth year of a computer science degree and need to come up with an idea for my final year project. This entails coming up with an idea for a software application....researching it...designing it...coding and finally testing it.

I am however completely stumped for ideas. I have experience in java, sql, jsp, php and C. I was wondering if anyone could throw any ideas at me or point me in the direction of where I might find some.

I am not a huge fan of java and so was hoping to maybe work on something web based with php or jsp. Web development is an area I find interesting, however I am stuck for ideas on what I could make that isn't just a website querying a database. I need to have something with some complexity.

Any positve responses will be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks.

Evil Phil

jsp is Java. Soz.


What are you interested in outside of your course? It helps to develop something that your passionate about and that you'll actually use.

damnyanks

What kinds of things interest you. What do you hope to do after 4th year? I'd say find some open source web app. Find a big bug they want fixed (or small if you arent so confident!)

fix it, there you go. Something useful

ressem

Can you say what's the reason for the java dislike? If the reason is that you want to make your FYP stand out from your class then just swapping language is a mistake.

I'd think that C#.Net wouldn't be too different from Java nor add anything, and the advantage of PHP is the PEAR libraries and slightly less complexity between code and display. Since PHP 5, again it's looking more like Java.
You are likely to be looking at javascript or actionscript for the frontend.

As for adding complexity, that can always be done. Refactor to use Spring Framework / Ibatis or Hibernate ; learning and applying automated testing etc ; changing the service to provide a custom interface to work with the console controllers with research, surveys.

For a new project, and a newly fledged programmer it's probably better to do this in way, creating a base and improving it in stages.

After data persistence and retrieval, the next common tasks for programs are allowing data to be presented in a more usable manner and manipulated. And for communicating such data.

How about googling "Data Visualization" images and seeing how different organisations present the data they have, and then thinking about what information clubs / organisations about you present and how to make it easier for them and more beneficial/pretty to yourself and others.

Or perhaps look at the data visualization project for boards last year.
http://sioc-project.org/node/335

Or look through the TED.com (http://www.ted.com/talks/tags) lectures just to get yourself in an inspired frame of mind.


Or the google wave developer preview http://wave.google.com/

Wouldn't agree with damnyanks though. That's more of a personal learning project and tutorial in team progamming. You could choose an existing project, say for example ASTERISK Voip server and try to improve it with an added module, but it would help to choose one in which you have some personal interest or experience.

yupyup7up

you could research object oriented databases...

Pokerpro

God, endless possibilities here...
Speech Technology (Text - to - Speech, Speech Recognition)
Artificial Intelligence/Neural Networks (AI)
Comparision Studies always score well and are easy to research e.g.
Compare Java and C++ mobile, performance or networking capabilities.
Showing a broad range of skills and knowledge is important with final year projects.

The old Gui front end and SQL/Microsoft DB backend application wont get you many marks anymore.

muckwarrior

If I was in final year now I'd be looking to do something on a mobile platform; Android, iPhone or WebOS. IMO there's more opportunity to come up with something that could actually be useful and hasn't been done before.