Thread: Developing skills

ive also heard many people recommend to new programmers to join an open-source project, which i disagree with as you do because their level of skill and experience usually wont be up to par with the rest of the project team.

you dont have to do anything crazy and big like some serious project. just write small little text-based games if you want practice on a useful program. for example, try and write a one player blackjack--you versus the 'ai'. or maybe a hangman game, use a text file for your word list, to get practice on file IO. for a two player game maybe try a simple tic tac toe.

as you know, the possibilities are endless. try and incorporate a hobby of yours into a program. or if your too busy to have hobbies, try and write a scheduling program for your appointments, etc.

good luck

OK, thanks for the replies guys, much appreciated. I am interested in socket programming and have written a few things, nothing of significance. I find the idea of emulating a machine cool and would ultimately like to do something to that affect. I guess I'll just have to try and think of interesting things to do, and keep practicing. Thanks

How about writing a generic library to simplify socket programming? Seems obvious but I think you'd learn a lot.

Also, you can't go wrong writing data structures, btree, linked list, and sorting etc.. All very useful, later in your career.
Make sure its something you enjoy as well.
my .02