I'm having trouble coming up with program ideas... I've been programming in C on and off for about year (I quit for awhile and had to restart). I'm not good enough to make even a decent game yet, but I do want to make something fun/useful, any suggestions?

Find a good book and tackle some of the problems in the back of chapters.... Even if they sound lame, programing them is usually pretty fun/educational.

... just an Idea.

-Devoyage

yeah, make an input form for a radio station show schedule (in half hour blocks) that is drag and droppable with adjusted timeslots and mutlipe user names. all backed into a database that is accessable from the web. i would love you for that.

and make it cross platform (windows and linux)

I've done some book challanges in the past, but I really want to make something people (or atleaste me) will actually use.

If I could do something like that I wouldn't need to ask for ideas.

you can get some games' source codes from the net, check them and you will have somewhere to start. As for ideas..., not a game but..., a multi platform movie player that works with ALL the different movie file types, I also would love you for that.

if your not ready to make a full-featured program how about making some building blocks, things that you might need in the future. some examples:

• an emulator for a z80 is a small part of making a game boy emulator but its useful on its own.
• a program that can work out the probabilities of different dice rolls is a small part of a backgammon ai, which in turn is a small part of a backgammon game.
• something that can shuffle and deal cards would be useful in many games.
• an arbitrary precision number library
• a matrix/vector library

Ive been programming for many years now, and have to say the hardest part of programming is choosing a project. Here are some ideas of mine that I've done or thought of doing.

1) an alarm clock, its easy and a fun way to get used to time structures and graphics - as well as windowing systems.

2) emulators usually allow you to save video games into movie files, you could write a video player for the movies - only downside to this is that every emulator probebly uses its own format.

Thats all i can think of off the top of my head...
also, as a previous post noted...some of the best software
comes from a smaller program that the author kept expanding..

Thanks for the ideas, one question... what are arbitrary precision number and matrix/vector libraries?

Or you could try out and teach yourself a new language. It'll give you something to do until inspiration strikes.

Though if you want to stick with a single language, building blocks are the way to go. Random modules are also fun (currently doing a password interface/manager in Python).

Attach yourself to an open source project that's in alpha, or beta but still has much of the basic code done. The codebase will be small, and generally uncluttered if it's well managed. You'll learn valuable skills, how to read code, how to find and fix bugs.
Implement a few simple things. Talk to the designers and the mentainers, and ask to do some easy parts. As you learn how things work more and more, *keep reading books*, you'll find yourself handling bigger and bigger tasks.
Make sure you actually understand what the code does.. not just.. well I call this function and this happens.

an arbitrary precision number is a number with no limit on the number of digits other than the memory of the machine, an arbitrary precision number library is a set of types and functions that allow you to work with arbitrary precision numbers. you can use them for working out huge factorials or pi to 53300 decimal places.

if you dont know what matrices and vectors are then dont worry about this until your math improves, they are mathematical constructs that have applications in 3d programming, numerical analysis and more.

odd_bloke: i used to live in peterborough, dont suppose you go to jack hunt school, i'd love to hear how some of the teachers are getting on.