Where to get ideas for programming?

Question

I am fairly new to programming and I would like to do stuff on my own (i.e. web developing, mobile developing, and whatever else). Are there good sites to go to to find what to get into? A programming website that tells programmers about mobile programming or affiliate marketing?

For instance, how would programmers hear about programming for android apps?

Please no cheesy stuff like filling out surveys or pyramids schemes.

Thank you

Answer 1

Ideas for programming come from solving a problem you have or someone you know well has.



The relational database which spawned all manner of things came from someone getting really fed up with different files and folders on each project they worked on. The solution offered provided the world with MySQL (a long way down the line) after passing through many developers.



The orignal idea came out of frustration Edgar Codd had.



As for mobile developing - that is a major topic which is constantly changing.



The iPhone is popular, but Nokia dwarfs the device in terms of users.



Those two operating systems are unrelated (iPhone OS and Symbian) and have different method for developing, Android is so new I haven't even seen a handset running it yet!



As far as affiliate marketing on phones a quick search kept pointing to some existing tools which work across different countries - someone has done well so far, but there is more to do in future.



Some great mobile marketing training by Dan Hollings is the most practical I've seen http://tgli.de/Hxv no wonder he taught Oprah to Tweet!



Keep learning and keep trying, you're bound to get there in the end.

Answer 2

(This is what I'm learning from the Software design course I'm doing)



Well there needs to be a need or requirement that a program of piece of software can fulfil. E.g an accounting firm needing a way to do their book keeping electronically for convenience and productivity. So once that requirement is identified the software can then be built around it to fulfil the requirement. Or a programmer may see an event or current affair where a program would seem very fitting and which end users could benefit from such as a Lollapalooza app at the time it is going on which tells the user about where they can find certain bands and acts (if there is multiple stages).



So to find ideas for yourself look at day to day situations where you think a program would/could come in handy to solving that problem or improving that situation.



As for where news for Android development I'm sure devs listen to and read Android specific podcasts, blogs, news sites, forums etc such as the official Android Developers site http://developer.android.com/intl/en/index.html

Answer 3

I've noticed a lack of good programs to perform nondestructive normalization for mp3 files. Mp3gain was great but it doesn't work on W7. Most of the others re-encode the file permanently.

Answer 4

Try searching for programming challenges on Google. There is one site called Topcoders that has regular programming contests going on. You can also look for previous questions in Google Summer of code.



Hope this helps.

Answer 5

There are a lot of tutorials on the internet but you need to Google them.

Answer 6

Ideas come from people's own head, so use yours.

Answer 7

u cant!!! that require born skills....!!