Best Programming Projects for Beginners

Are you a programming beginner? Are you looking for projects to work on that don’t require extensive knowledge in a programming language? You have come to the right place. I will go over five great projects for beginners to try. I will start out with the easiest to code, and then they will progressively get harder. However, I believe that all of these projects can be completed with a little bit of time and effort.

Before we get into the projects, you may be wondering what programming language to use. If you are a complete beginner and you just want to code for fun, I’d recommend Python. If you are still a beginner, but you want to learn a programming language that requires a bit more work to get the hang of but will really teach you the ins and outs of programming, I’d go for Java or C++. My personal favorite is Java, and I actually have a series of tutorials on this website if you are interested in learning it, but if you’re also thinking about getting into competitive programming, C++ is the way to go. Of course, if you already have a language that you’re comfortable with, use that for these projects. And please note that for some projects, you may not have much of a choice for what language to use. I will try my best to indicate which languages work for each project. Now that we have that out of the way, let’s get into the projects.

1. Secret Number Guessing Game

Java, Python, C++, etc

This is arguably the easiest game that you can code in Python. For this game, you need to be able to get user input, generate a random number, and then use if statements to check if the user’s number is equal to the secret number. You could also add a while loop which lets the user keep playing until they get the number correct. There isn’t too much flexibility with this game, nor is it very fun to play, but I’d still recommend seeing if you can code it. If you are programming in Java and are stuck at the user input part, look into the Scanner class. For Python, all you need is the input function. Let’s move onto the next game.

2. Choose Your Own Adventure Game

Java, Python, C++, etc

A choose your own adventure game is another great way to get into programming. In fact, this was the first project I made in any programming language, all the way back in 8th grade. All that this project requires is a bunch of print statements, if statements, and then of course user input. The general idea of this game is to pose the user with a question and then give a few different options. The user will then decide which option they want to take, and then they will enter it in the console. The program will read what the user chose, and then it will continue asking questions based on the response. Let’s look at what this could look like.

Enter your name:

Grant

Greetings, Grant! Would you like to be a (1)sorcerer or a (2)knight?

1

Great! I will now take you to the School of Sorcery . Would you like to travel by (1)horse or by (2)dragon?

2

You get the point. There is a ton of room for creativity with this game, and you will also become very familiar with obtaining user input and if statement logic, so I believe this is a great project for beginners.

3. Simple Website

HTML/CSS, JavaScript (React), Python (Flask)

One of the most classic programming projects of all time is without a doubt a website. We use them everyday, so logically many new programmers want to create one. They are tons of fun to make, and they can be used for a multitude of purposes. You can make a website for your art portfolio, you can make a website to make blog posts about something you are passionate about, you can make online shops, and once you’re an expert, you can charge other people to make a website for them. If you are truly just starting out, I’d recommend learning HTML and CSS and making your website like that. There are tons of free courses online that will teach you everything you need to know to make a basic website. You can look on Udemy, YouTube, or CodeAcademy.

If you are bit more advanced and you already know HTML/CSS, you can try learning React or Flask. React is a framework for creating modern websites in JavaScript, and Flask is essentially the Python equivalent. These are great ways to grow your web development skills while also practicing a more relevant programming language (Sorry HTML and CSS!)

4. Web Scraper

Python

Web scraping is a skill that every programmer needs to learn. You can scrape movie reviews, jobs, images to train your neural network with, sports data, subreddits, and more. Personally, I’ve used web scraping to automatically download parliamentary speech transcripts for a research internship with a Columbia University professor. The possibilities are endless. I highly recommend using Python for this project. You can use the libraries BeautifulSoup (to scrape data from HTML) or Selenium (to scrape images). Once you get good, you can go on Fiverr and offer to scrape images for cash.

5. AI Chatbot

Python, Java, JavaScript

The last project we will look at is an AI Chatbot. While one of the easier projects to make using artificial intelligence, this project will be very challenging to a beginner. However, that is also the reason why I included it. This project is a great way to get your feet wet in machine learning, and you will without a doubt learn so much. There are several frameworks that you can use to help you with this project including Dialogflow, Amazon Lex, and more. You could even try to create your own virtual assistant like Siri or Alexa!

Final Words

If you want to use this article as a roadmap for projects, go ahead. If you want to just try one, feel free. If one of these projects inspired you to make something else, that’s amazing. Regardless of what you make, as long as you are having fun and learning something new you are doing it right. You can even start making some money on the side if you become an expert at something.

If you want to share something that you made with me, reach out to my email codingwithgrant@gmail.com.

Thanks !