I keep choosing beginner projects that are either trivial calculators or enormous applications that take months and never finish. I want something with files, user input, error handling and maybe one external API, but small enough to complete in a couple of weekends. A personal expense importer sounds practical. What scope limits would you set at the beginning so I can learn several skills and still reach a usable version one?
Choosing a project that is small enough to finish but complex enough to teach something new
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For a weekend project, I would cap the scope hard: import one file type, one API, one output format. Anything beyond that turns into “versio...
For a weekend project, I would cap the scope hard: import one file type, one API, one output format. Anything beyond that turns into “version two” no matter how exciting it sounds. The learning happens in finishing, not in imagining features.
I like the expense importer idea, but I'd keep the first version embarrassingly small. Let it read a CSV, call one API for currency conversion or categorization, and save results locally. No accounts, no syncing, no dashboard circus.
I would also define a hard stop for error handling. Handle bad rows, missing fields and one invalid input case, then move on. If you start t...