Programming Projects for Beginners

This page contains a collection of small-size programming projects suitable for students who have just completed an introductory programming course. There is no specific programming language requirement. But, you should adopt the language that is the most comfortable for you. Each project is some simpler version of an existing application. Unlike typical programming assignments, you have to also come up with the exact specification for these programs. I list some issues that you have to handle in specification and functionality that you may need from libraries to implement the program.

  1. Output the contents of the given file to screen. Allow an optional argument (default to 72) that limits the maximum length of lines. (See Linux command fmt)

    How do you split lines? At spaces? Do you insert hyphens when you split mid-word? What about words with hyphens already in them? Are all your lines exactly 72 characters or do you split lines earlier?

    This program only requires some basic file handling and string manipulation.

  2. Search for files matching the specified criteria. Allow the user to specify size limits, modification date ranges, and patterns of names. (See Linux command find)

    Do you allow regex as patterns? Do you allow users to depth-limit searches?

    This program should parse the command line conditions, traverse directories, and query file properties.

  3. A pager (See Linux command less).

    This program has to manipulate the terminal. Learn about ANSI terminal codes to control the terminal.

  4. Personal finance tracking application (See gnucash).

    Since financial data is critical, use a database (learn about sqlite). Do you allow the user to encrypt it? What are the ways a user can summarize his/her financial data.

  5. TODO list management with deadlines (See the text-based manager todo.txt).

    This program should be a daemon that notifies the user when a deadline is approaching.

  6. Display a running digital clock on the terminal. This can be a full-screen application or a live-updating, line-oriented one.

  7. Print today’s weather status

    Use the website wttr.in for the data. This program has to request some data from the web. See Python requests library.

  8. Print today’s news headlines.

    Find a website that provides news of your interest. Does it provide a way to fetch the data?

  9. A line-oriented chat application over TCP (talk).

    Learn about sockets to communicate over the Internet.

  10. A GUI-based chat application.

    Use a GUI library like GTK, QT, or Tkinter.

  11. A spell-checker.

    Spell check against a database of known words. Do you allow the user to add words? Is your program efficient on large text? See “Edit distance”.

  12. A spell-corrector.

    Allow the user to interactively correct spelling errors.