I’ve just completed Todd McCleod’s Udemy course and am eager to solidify the skills by struggling through the process of building something. The only problem is I’m not really sure what is ‘too much to handle’ given I am a beginner to coding as well. I feel like I’ve got a basic skill set (although concurrency still throws me for a loop) and am looking to put the pieces together. Can anyone suggest somethings that are in the realm of a beginner with Golang and coding?
Choose something you’ve done before, and that would be done differently with go. I did xpath for json, which I had done before in java and c++, and used an elegant lexer from a talk by Rob Pike and channels (pipes)
In addition to David’s suggestion there are two things that I did that come into my mind:
Watch for go programming related questions in this forum as well as on stackoverflow.com and try to solve the problems with your own solution. Give yourself the time you (!) need, It’s not necessarry to publish your solution. This helped me a lot to solidify my basic skills and to learn where I still need to learn more.
On Github, search for go releated projects you like. Go thru the issues and try to fix those you think you can. Try to contribute to the project if you fixed something broken or implemented a feature.
Write a program that pings a specific reddit for the top posts that day. This might stretch your ability a little bit, but it isn’t incredibly hard. Also feel free to ping me if you need help.
Write a program that given an imgur url, downloads the image there. Again, might take a little push to get there but doable.
Combine 1 & 2 to create something that downloads an image from something like r/wallpapers (get the top posts, filter for one that is imgur, then download it).
Try to find out how to change your desktop background via code. I know on mac os x you can do this by editing an SQLite value.
Combine 3 & 4 to make a program that downloads a new wallpaper and sets it daily.
Try to code basic data structures. Things like a queue, a stack, or a graph. Or try to code algorithms like a binary search and do exercise problems. I write and talk about these specific topics more on my blog here - https://www.calhoun.io/lets-learn-algorithms/#bubblesort
Code up a tic tac toe game that you can play. Try making it so you choose all the moves, then try writing a crappy AI and then try to make the AI smarter. The last portion of this might be a little harder but its a good exercise.
Try to code up a blackjack game. Again, no AI at first, then try ot introduce some basic AI.
Follow a guide where you build a web app from scratch. I go over this in my course (usegolang.com) but I don’t want to sound like I’m just trying to get you to buy it, so do 1-8 first and see if they help. If not, feel free to ignore me.
If you get that far, or have any issues, feel free to reach out for more suggestions. I have been trying to stockpile some beginner-accessible ideas and would love to get your feedback on them if you need more projects
Inspiring thread! I started my Todd-Journey a few days ago with 0 programming experience. I like it so far and very happy to see that the feeling seems to prevail throughout the course.
Now I know exactly where to look when or if i make it through.
Thank you
Thanks all for the replies! Golang is my crack at programming (besides some HTML/CSS/basic JS). Currently looking into some of them. I just feel like I’m at Stage 2 Cliff of Confusion! lol. I see a blank page, have an idea, and have no clue where to even begin (tic–tac-toe) game for example. I guess if coding was easy everyone would do it.
