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Side projects for Junior Developers

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  • 27-06-2017 10:53pm
    #1
    k2788
    Registered Users Posts: 13 ✭


    To give you a bit of background, I graduated from a Software developing crash course (1 year) and self-learned Java up to a point where I could pass the Java Associate certificate exam.

    After about 18 months grafting, this was enough to land me a Junior Full Stack Web developer Job which has started a bit slower than I expected (html updates, minor CSS, Java and JS changes. etc) but progress nonetheless.

    The gap in my experience is now that I don't have any major project that I can show off or enhance so I took to google for ideas of projects that can I could take up.

    Open-Source projects from Github seem endlessly complicated and more aimed at experienced developers.

    I though it may be interesting to try developing an app with the API's from google, Spotify, Instagram etc but i found them very hard to even get started.

    Searching google for websites and ideas is fruitless as there are so many options where most sites only give idea but no instructions or hints how to get started and this is the difficulty, especially without help that you can normally rely on from tutors or lectures in college.

    If anyone can advise or recommend any decent well rounded project, youtube series or course that can be completed within a few months or even share some personal experience with side projects while working as a new developer


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    #2
    DefinitelyMarc
    Registered Users Posts: 121 ✭✭DefinitelyMarc


    I made my own blog/website in rails 5: http://marclaffan.com/posts/1

    I also made an Android app that's literally just a text adventure. To be honest, the rails 5 project took less time and is far more impressive. More enjoyable too, and beneficial as well.

    After these two, I have plans to make an augmented reality app, or possible a unity game.


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    #3
    14ned
    Registered Users Posts: 768 ✭✭✭14ned


    k2788 wrote: »
    Open-Source projects from Github seem endlessly complicated and more aimed at experienced developers.

    That's precisely the value add though. If you can repeatedly get non-trivial patchsets into a large, well known open source project, then you can do the same at any employer.

    The ability to be placed in front of a 1M+ line mature code base and get immediately to work is exactly what distinguishes a senior engineer who earns real money from toy money. And to learn how to do that effectively, there's no alternative to pulling up your sleeves and diving in, and keep repeating until you're good at it.

    Niall


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    #4
    Buford T Justice
    Registered Users Posts: 6,250 ✭✭✭Buford T Justice


    If java's your thing then why not write something that consumes html or xml and uses an api from another service to broadcast it?

    For an example, I created an app in C# (and a similar one in Java) that consumes xml data and uses twitters api and a few wrapper classes to send tweets....
    https://twitter.com/ROINewsNow
    As you can see, over 38K tweets and I've never physically sent one.

    Its a simple command line application that gets run every 5 minutes.

    All the code is on github and visible for anyone to use, but for obvious reasons I've just not posted it here.


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    #5
    Pelvis
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,758 ✭✭✭Pelvis


    Looks good, are you allowed post the name of the repo? Can't find it under ROINewsNow.


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    #6
    k2788
    Registered Users Posts: 13 ✭k2788


    Thanks for the reply, I like the idea of jumping into a github project and will consider that in the future but to start off, I've chosen to remake this project I found online with a few twists : javatpoint com/fee-report-project-in-java

    The App has two components :
    An 'Admin" that can log into the admin section to Add, View and Delete users.
    A 'User' section that a person can log into in order to Add, View or Deletes a type of record from a database.

    To make it more interesting I plan to integrate with an API to make the records dynamic. For example a user can add a 'stock' to their user profile and the app will display data related to that stock via the API. Alphavantage seems like a decent option. I also plan to use Git as I go along.

    My next question (and maybe it should be in a separate thread) is what would be the best way to go about working on this project without any 'development' experience. How do I design the architecture levels as not to run into issues in a few weeks time. Should I just jump in or should I be implementing a backlog and a agile/scrum approach? If so, what is the best way to learn these techniques ?


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    #7
    Buford T Justice
    Registered Users Posts: 6,250 ✭✭✭Buford T Justice


    Pelvis wrote: »
    Looks good, are you allowed post the name of the repo? Can't find it under ROINewsNow.

    No problem
    https://github.com/mcgowanb/newsnow

    Just didn't want to make it too easy if someone wanted to take it on :)


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