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Comment by super-serial | Hacker News Reader

Coding without purpose is like eating by using a feeding tube. What's the point?

I've done useless projects at school and at work but the point of those projects was to get credentials or money.

If you're doing this for fun, you should start with something you want to make. A game idea, an app idea, a robot that does something. Break the problem into the smallest parts and start with that.

I also hate complicated compiling processes, bloated tools, or anything to do with configuration. But that's just part of software development. You'll have the motivation to plow through that if you really want to build something.

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I take your point but actually, for me, at least in the initial stages, I'm just looking to recreate a feeling from my youth: tinkering with ideas and letting one discovery move me onto the next, figuring out how things work and seeing if I can improve on them. But I think you're right, up to a point, if there was an open source game or robot which was created using fairly low-level programming, so I could enjoy just tinkering with the code without having to learn lots of tools etc., it would be more inspirational than just trying to learn "for the sake of it" with a textbook, so thanks for your perspective.

Have you seen https://projecteuler.net/?

This is fantastic - exactly the kind of thing I'd be interested in. Thanks very much!

There's some similar things out there:

http://codekata.com/

Google "(language) koans"

This is very true, but note that the same applies to the projects themselves, too.

If a project itself has no purpose (i.e. is just providing a justification to code something), you will 1) experience that the project scope will expand into many directions, leading to an overhelming amount of ideas and work, and/or 2) you will abandon the project early on, after you have written a lot, but before you have learned much. This is usually a demotivating experience, followed by a guilty feeling of not having "finished" it.

You need at least one real user for that project, be it yourself, some friend, or a charity organization. That way, you will find it more easy to limit the project scope and to stick to realistic goals. This will be more motivating and satisfying, even if it ends up not being used in the real world. Along that route, you will probably learn more, and the things you learn will be more useful to you.

I agree. But there is a project every can have, well at least people with a hackers mindset: learn emacs. Start with using org-mode for your your todo list. Org-tables to organize more complex lists and ledgers. Take a side tour of vim. Continue with evil mode.

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