Summer Downtime (Give me a project!)

[tikkus]

So finals are over and I have 4 months of doing nothing but work at a shitty job for mediocre pay.

I'd like for any established programmers that read the board to give me an assignment, or string of assignments, that would challenge my intellect during this downtime. I understand you all are busy and thusly I'm not expecting anything too intricate, just something that will keep me on my toes.

If anyone could help me out with this I'd be grateful.

FYI:

I know these languages:

C++: Fairly fluent. Just got an A out of my Data Design and Abstraction Course, so I know about pointers, linked-lists, binary search trees, classes, structs, recursion, etc. I haven't done any GUI programming yet, its all been command line stuff.

PHP: Very, very, limited. This is what I planned on trying to program in this summer but my interest is shifting from web development to software. I'd still be down for anything regarding PHP though.

Stuff I'd be interested in:

Ruby, PERL (My next CS class is PERL), C#, Java, Lisp, Python, and anything .NET related.

Thanks again if anyone decides to humor me.

[gremlinz273]

Start looking for an internship for next summer. It's never too soon. Figure out what programming languages they use, become fluent in them. If you can figure out a way to become certified in that language, do it. Certification is mostly bs and costs money, but it will give you a leg up and hopefully get your resume past the HR threshing floor.
Contribute to an open source project. Get your name posted in the forums somehow, employers like to do a google search on your name and see what turns up, and what your interests are.
Some tips to get you started.

[tikkus]

Yeah, I was looking, and a lot of employers now are desiring C#/.NET experience and that was mainly what I was hoping to accomplish. I'm just not sure how to delve into it with no direction and nothing tangible to accomplish.

[Zippygoose]

Hey tikkus-

Play around with web services a little bit-especially if you're interested in .NET. I've found it to be one thing a lot of companies are looking for that isn't generally covered in college courses (This could be totally different now but at least it was the case when I was in school).

Something simplish might be to write a .NET windows app that can subscribe to a web service which uses an object data source to catalog a list of products, your music collection, etc etc.

Edit:
Here's a link to a good tutorial on implementing object data sources.
Tutorial 4: Displaying Data With the ObjectDataSource

[Zippygoose]

Also-If you really want to check out the "cutting edge" play around with Orcas (the next version of visual studio MS is working on). The new LINQ stuff coming out is especially cool:
ScottGu's Blog : Using LINQ with ASP.NET (Part 1)

I'm not sure if it's available for public download but if you're interested shoot me a PM and I'll hook you up.

Here's another tutorial series on working with data in .net 2.0 which is great:
ScottGu's Blog : Working with Data in ASP.NET 2.0

(Yes my posts are MS centric but only because that's what I do ).

[ruination]

http://www.fohguild.org/forums/uberw...lopment-forum/

[Stil]

I have a few ideas, but you can alternatively hit Rent A Coder:How Software Gets Done and pick a few projects which sound interesting to do. This way you might even get some money for it.

But I'd say try to familiarize yourself with the concepts of bigger corporate architecture instead of just hammering away at code. The dev's on my teams are usually missing core ideas of how modern corporate software works. I don't review code saying to myself "wow, I can't believe he used a bubble sort instead of quicksort" often. Far more often I read through code and say "dear lord- why transmit individual records through a web service when .NET 2.0 has cleaned up the serialization problems of datasets?" or "good god- that data maniuplation should have happened in a stored proc instead of in code".

Get narrow and long before you aim for depth. Building a simple web app that:

• Has data driven content stored in a DB
• Uses some for of abstraction (sprocs, etc.) to interact
• Has a data layer using something like the Microsoft data application block or similar (built into a separate assembly- not incorporated into webpage code)
• Performs some function in a business layer (built into a separate assembly- not incorporated into webpage code or datalayer code)
• Displays some data and allows modification of that data
• Uses CSS to change the page display

Bonus points for:

• Incorporating some form of audit log and or versioning/history in the DB
• Indexing DB and optimizing stored procs for speed
• Having data layer do DB sproc discovery
• Using AJAX on page
• Building framework such that all pieces are inheritable
• Hitting a web service to populate something (could just synch up time with atomic clock)

Do all that and I could bring you in tomorrow. Naturally you'll eventually want to get *better* at doing certain parts... I suck at UI and CSS manipulation but I can make a DB and business layer code better than most. But having the basic idea of the architecture from the ground up is far more important than specializing early, IMO.

I'll also agree- from a career POV, get your name out there on something early and often. Volunteer to make a webpage for the local boy scout troop or something. Don't just get involved. Get involved and get published.

[kegkilla]

Originally Posted by tikkus

give me an assignment, or string of assignments, that would challenge my intellect during this downtime. I understand you all are busy and thusly I'm not expecting anything too intricate, just something that will keep me on my toes.

meet a woman?

[tikkus]

To everyone besides the retard above, thanks for the advice. I'll be researching into this shortly and I'll let you all know how it turns out.

Does anyone have any preferences as to what languages to use?

[Hachima]

I'd say C# with .NET skills or Java EE skills would make you the most marketable as a software developer right now. MSN Careers - The Five Hottest Jobs in Technology - Career Advice Article pretty much says the same too.

[tikkus]

Awesome, I'll probably buy a book on C# and go to town with it.

Thanks again guys.

[Tuco]

Unless you want to get paid... http://www.fohguild.org/forums/uberw...lopment-forum/

[tikkus]

I'd do the uberworlds thing but I'd like more corporate experience. I'm not at all interested in game programming. =\

[MrGraham]

As someone who has been job hunting extensively recently, I'd recommend getting as much Python experience as possible.

Another big thing that seems to be coming up more and more is Plone, which I believe is for web apps, haven't looked that much into it.

[Elgonn]

If you want to get some C# experience nothing is more fun than fucking around with XNA.

Make anything you like. It will be easy. (I know you said you didn't want games. But you don't have to make one.)