macOS Summer Project

[SRossi]

Summers finally here and for me that means no college and therefore no college projects to do.

But im getting bored not doing any programming as such and so therefore im looking at the MacRumours people to help me choose what I could pick as a summer project.

I know a bit of cocoa and objective-C but I would rather have a project that would help me build those skill.

So does anyone have any ideas that I could use for a project?

Thanks all,

Stephen

 

[Cinder6]

Heh, the programmer's lament: knowing how to program, but not knowing what to program. Rather than giving you something specific...

My advice is to take a look at various hobbies you have. Is there any way you could improve them, make them easier, automate them, etc.? For example, I play D&D, and in 4th edition keeping track of powers can be really annoying. Most people write the complete text of their powers out on cards so they can keep track of what ones have already been used. I hate doing that kind of thing, so I wrote a program to do it all for me.

If you take this sort of approach, you can wind up getting some good experience, as well as get a program you'll actually find useful.

 

[GorillaPaws]

So one of the challenges of UI design is handling the fact that the length of strings when localized into certain languages (apparently German is particularly infamous for this) can cause layout issues. A handy utility you might want to work on would take a user-inputed string, the user would check off the languages they want to localize for and the app would use a machine translation web service like Google's to return the strings for each language. The app would then determine the string with the most characters and return that as a result, so you could plan your GUI based around the largest possible strings.

I realize that a Google translator is no substitution for a real human translation, but in this case, where you're just trying to determine sizing, it might at least be a helpful guide. This was something I was planning on playing around with myself, but am busy working on my own little project right now.

 

[Eraserhead]

For example, I play D&D, and in 4th edition keeping track of powers can be really annoying. Most people write the complete text of their powers out on cards so they can keep track of what ones have already been used. I hate doing that kind of thing, so I wrote a program to do it all for me.

Linky?

 

[SRossi]

Hmmmm, still unsure.

Cinder liked your lament but see this is the thing im not good thinking up projects as in why i asked for help.

Gorilla that sounds like a good project just need some more information on the application although it sounds like a good project seems like it incorporates a lot of different ideas.

Thanks so far for your help,

Stephen

Edit: Does anyone know about any other accounting software for the mac? Because thats the way im thinking of heading, doing an application like Qucikbooks the accounting software.

Wondering how hard would a project like that be? Is it worth wasting sometime creating a more basic one?

Still accepting ideas though .

 

[adomanico18]

iphone!

get thinking of a new idea. make up some code in xcode. get it on the app store. make money .

 

[SRossi]

get thinking of a new idea. make up some code in xcode. get it on the app store. make money .

I cant program for the iPhone, I was toying with the idea of learning but I have no iPhone to try it on . Thanks for the idea though, still might try and learn about programming for the iPhone.

Stephen

 

[Cinder6]

Linky?

I'd love to distribute it, but I'm not sure of its legality. See, I took OCRs of the books I have and wrote a script to pull out the full text. Not sure WotC would like that. Plus, I only have Warlock and Wizard done, as that's what I'm playing right now. And I need to fix the way it saves, maybe change it from a flat file to SQLite.

Here's a screenshot, though.

When you say "use power", it'll try to do the correct roll, but it currently has no way to store character level.

 

[Ritchie13]

Summers finally here and for me that means no college and therefore no college projects to do.

But im getting bored not doing any programming as such and so therefore im looking at the MacRumours people to help me choose what I could pick as a summer project.

I know a bit of cocoa and objective-C but I would rather have a project that would help me build those skill.

So does anyone have any ideas that I could use for a project?

Thanks all,

Stephen

Not sure if it's exactly what you're looking for but this site has a large list of programming problems:

http://projecteuler.net/

 

[GorillaPaws]

Gorilla that sounds like a good project just need some more information on the application although it sounds like a good project seems like it incorporates a lot of different ideas.

Thanks so far for your help,

Stephen

Edit: Does anyone know about any other accounting software for the mac? Because thats the way im thinking of heading, doing an application like Qucikbooks the accounting software.

Wondering how hard would a project like that be? Is it worth wasting sometime creating a more basic one?

So for the translation utility, if you have Hillegass' book, you might want to take a look at Chapter 28 where he has some good example code for dealing with NSURLRequest and NSURLConnection for connecting to web services. Here's a link to Google's docs on using their translation service.

As far as accounting software, I can't think of anything on the level of Quickbooks, but there are some more lightweight options out there designed for managing personal finances like Squirrel and MoneyWell (more of a Quicken competitor than a Quickbooks one). I wouldn't classify these types of apps as the kind of thing you'd call a "summer project." Hope those references help and good luck.

 

[SRossi]

So for the translation utility, if you have Hillegass' book, you might want to take a look at Chapter 28 where he has some good example code for dealing with NSURLRequest and NSURLConnection for connecting to web services. Here's a link to Google's docs on using their translation service.

The translation utility looks a good project think I might have a small try at trying to create an application like this. It doesn't look hard and basically Chapter 28 goes through exactly how to do it.

As far as accounting software, I can't think of anything on the level of Quickbooks, but there are some more lightweight options out there designed for managing personal finances like Squirrel and MoneyWell (more of a Quicken competitor than a Quickbooks one). I wouldn't classify these types of apps as the kind of thing you'd call a "summer project." Hope those references help and good luck.

As on finance applications im thinking of doing a larger application with a friend or perhaps just by myself and we had decided on a SAGE look a like as Quickbooks has really no competitors on the mac although personal finance applications look an easier place to start before moving up to that level.

Thanks so far,

Stephen