Hi, first time posting here. Been having a bit of a problem deciding what to do, and felt like this would be an opportunity to get to know the community here a bit.

I know some Ruby, C++, and a tiny bit of C. I'd say my strongest language is Ruby, but I'm by no means an expert at it.

I've been wanting to start and/or contribute to an open source project recently. Up until this week, I was going to go headfirst into C++ and Qt by making an XMPP/Jabber client. I might still do it, but it seems like Psi+ (patch set for Psi, a client also written in C++ and Qt, though a bit dated) is getting a bit of work done on it again, so I might contribute to it and bring modern features to it instead of making a whole new client. I still need to explore the codebase a bit and figure out what I need to do for it.

I also have a Ruby project that's basically a set of headers for making your own program like neofetch with pretty much only printing, as the headers do the rest. It's very unfinished, but I kind of want to continue work on it, maybe even rewrite it in a compiled language.

One of the other ideas I had was modern, open source BBS door games. Yes, that kind of BBS. I recently set up Synchronet on a server, and like it a lot so I've been thinking of writing some stuff to play with on it.

I'm just not sure what exactly I should do with my time, what would be the most "worth it", and what I truly would want to do. New ideas would be great, post them and I'll think about it.

Write some text-only adventure game like "Basements and Beasties" from Frank DaCosta.

Never been good at creative writing, so I guess I can try a rewrite of Dunnet or something, or I can push myself to actually think out a story. I think that could actually be combined with the "Door Game" idea, I just have to add in multiplayer over rlogin or whatever Synchronet uses and I should be good.

Thanks, I'll definitely consider it.

If Ruby is your thing and you are looking at creating web content, why not give rails a shot

http://guides.rubyonrails.org/

https://education.jlab.org/nim/index.html
https://conwaylife.com/

It sounds like you just listed a handful of interesting ideas. Stop talking about "wanting to get busy" and "get busy!"

I've never been a big web guy (I have yet to even write my own site), but I'll try it out. My main use for Ruby so far is scripting stuff (instead of using Python or Bash)

True. I was going to start going through the Psi+ codebase later today and start work on what needs to be done. As for the door game idea, I know someone else who might be interested, so I can start that (though it will likely have to be in C, knowing him). Honestly, it might be a good idea for me to also write a new BBS server from scratch, as Synchronet seems to be considered a bit dated and difficult, and the only other viable solution (Mystic) is proprietary. Enigma does exist, but it appears to require a really old Node version.

That's a perfect beginner/intermediate project: write your own website.

Doesn't need to start complex: a page of introduction, a page about you, and a page summarising what you've worked on before, what you're currently working on, etc. Then add more bits organically as you begin working on larger projects or encountering interesting concepts or whatever.

You'll no doubt find plenty of Ruby/C++ libraries/frameworks/etc that can do stuff for you - and for professional use a well-tested library is usually the right option - but for personal learning, it's fine to ignore those things and figure it out for yourself. (Just be sure you have a sufficient understanding of security and how to test for vulnerabilities before you put stuff online.)