Be A Python Dev

Breaking into the world of software engineering and landing a job can be extremely difficult even with a degree. Every employer is looking for someone with some experience. No matter what job description you check when looking for a software developer profile, you will always find that they need someone experienced. Someone who has hands-on knowledge of coding and development methodologies. But how will you get that required hands-on experience when you do not get hired by anyone in the first place? There is a way out.

If you want to take up software development as a profession and want to increase your chances of landing up a high-paying job, you will need to ensure you have something to show on your resume that demonstrates you can work and finish some projects on your own. This would give you the necessary experience to back your knowledge of computer programming and development. When you are working on your projects for gaining knowledge, you can do that at your own pace, thereby giving you the required time and space to learn. However finishing more projects in a shorter time will definitely look favorable for you during your technical interview.

Talking about these projects, if you are able to create something useful that is ready to use solution, that is a bonus. Completing such a project is a clear demonstration of all your skills right from requirement analysis, problem-solving, to developing the code and deploying the solution and can potentially make you some side income.

In this piece we will walk you through some software development projects that you can work on, that will help you grow important skills quickly thereby increasing your chances to land a job. Here is is the list of projects that you can work on that you can present as a list in your resume:

Software Development Projects To Gain You a Versatile Skill-Set

Though there are hundreds of projects that replicate real-life problems and devising solutions around them, we have handpicked certain projects that can really showcase your analytical, problem solving, and development skills all at once. Read through for more:

Address book using Java GUI builder 

This project involves the creation of a free program that uses JDBC and Java swing. This is one of the simple projects that you can build but that can help you learn and showcase some of the swing components such as using JFrames, Jbuttons, JTextFields, and GridBagLayout or Layout Manager. This implies this project is about writing a simple program of an address book that is used to store the email, Names, addresses, and Contact Numbers of friends or important contacts. In this project, you also learn how to use JDBC drivers and how SQL statements can be used to manipulate or connect with the database. This project as such can also help you in learning how to save and retrieve objects from a local data file and how to build simple UIs.

Similar project: Build a Address book CLI in Python

Gaming AI

Designing gaming AI is an exciting thing to do. Most importantly, such projects simply take your coding complexity and experience to another level. In these projects, you will learn how to accept complex behaviors as inputs and convert them into zeros and ones. If this excites you, you can go all guns blazing and create a full-fledged game based on popular sports or a gameplay software based on user decisions. Having said that, your first gaming AI or project does not need to be something as good as the Assassins Creed. You can build a simple gaming AI – something like the game Snake with a few additional features in the gameplay to make it a little more advanced. Through this project, you can showcase your knowledge on data structures, game engines such as Unity, and algorithms.

Further reading: python-game-development-introduction-and-primer

Chat-based web application in NodeJS

This is a real-time application that can be used as a chatting platform that shows and sends messages instantly without the need for a page refresh. In this project, a JavaScript framework known as Express.js is used and libraries such as Socket.io and Mongoose are used. JavaScript is primarily used for client-side coding and using NodeJS lets you write server-side scripts as well as command line scripts with all of your code base being in the same language. This simple application shall allow multiple users to chat together. To keep things simple you can skip the authentication part. This is a simple app that can help you start learning how to build web applications and how web servers such as NodeJS work to serve local applications across the HTTP protocol.

Such an application can also be made in Python using the Django Framework or the Flask Microservice framework.

Speech-driven calculator with GUI using C# and the .net voice recognition library

This is another innovative project that you can take up. Speech recognition is one aspect that is now being increasingly explored and used by many apps and websites. Many apps are now designed with the ability to take in voice inputs for launching a search and accomplishing other tasks. Therefore taking up this project can help you get some good knowledge on how you can build a speech-driven application using MS Visual Studio, .NET library for voice recognition, and some coding in C#. This application teaches how to build UIs with the Visual Studio community IDE and how to use an external library (.NET) and API to add previously written functionality to an application.

Interpreter for a fictional language using Java 

Someone would think why to write an Interpreter in Java of all things. Writing an Interpreter in Java is simple and it helps with the firsthand knowledge of how you can build an interpreter or a dynamic execution engine that is used to execute your programs. This allows your application to be configurable and the tools pertaining to your interpreter can be customized to perform complex tasks when required so that you would not have to replace the entire application or tool. As such writing, your own interpreter program helps you to learn about application sequencing and how interpreters work for coding languages such as Python and JavaScript.

Data network transmission application 

In this project, one application is created acting as a client and another application as a server. To demonstrate the working of the application, the client application converts a string into a series of Bytes/Packets with CRC error checking bits and then sends them to the server application. The server then listens for requests from the client application using network sockets to decode bits into the original string and checks a CRC for errors and fixes them. This is a great application to build that can help you demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of data and network transfer protocols and how data transfer between client and server applications work.

Ad or Job Platform 

This is a project that involves building a two-way application that allows users to place ads to buy or sell something and someone needing that product or service getting a platform to get the contact information of the seller and making the purchase kind of like Craigslist, Fiverr, or even eBay. This is about creating a common platform where buyers meet sellers or seekers meet providers. It can be a platform offering anything starting from Used products, to companies offering jobs. Building such an application involves the complexity of matching different users with their respective needs and hence would need a high level of programming. You can build a barter trade site coinciding with this idea. Using this project you can get in-depth knowledge about web development, UI designing, and database management which can be a great addition to your CV.

Mobile Apps

Mobile applications are now the mainstay of the IT world today. They are in huge demand everywhere and as such if you have built a few mobile applications yourself, it can be of great help to add to your software development knowledge and make you industry-ready. You can pick and choose any of the mobile apps that are existing in the market, but if you are able to come up with something unique, it is certainly going to add to your notable achievements list. Plus if your app becomes a hit and you are able to monetize it in some way, you can earn some quick bucks. For instance – you can create a simple mobile app to manage your To-Do list, but if you are able to make it auto-syncing with other apps such as Evernote, OneNote, Google Sheets, it will be a great utility. When creating mobile apps you can learn about the ins and outs of mobile app development and programming – Android or iOS, UI, UX, and API, etc.

Further reading: new-software-developers-guide-to-mobile-app-development

Business Process and HR Management System 

This is one of the basic systems that every business needs to manage its day-to-day operations. In a business, there are hundreds of tasks that can be easily automated using business management software. Thankfully, there are already too many products and solutions in the market, to help you get an idea of what you can do to build such a system. Keeping in mind the solutions that have already been developed you can include some add ons and innovative extras that are not yet thought of. Something like an alert when an employee applies for a leave, or an alert when someone is applying for an advance, so on and so forth. Working on such a project can help you get hands-on experience in web development, UI Design, general coding, database, process, and project management.

Key Takeaways

Software Development is an unending world and is evolving every day with new technologies and frameworks coming up every day. But though the technology and programming languages and technology platforms may differ, the basic problem-solving ability of a developer is all that it takes to get a job. Use this list of projects to get well-versed with all the technical skills you need. Work on a few of those and get them listed in your CV and you will see a world of endless opportunities opening up for you in the IT world.