I am a reasonably competent programmer (most ‘qualified’ with Borland’s C++ Builder)
Trouble is I haven’t done anything for over a year now. It’s not that I can’t program. I just have no inspiration, no ideas.
So I am asking if anyone has any ideas for small but useful programs, probably useful to you rather than me.
This is probably a bad idea, but when you’re (I’m) bored you’ll (I’ll) try anything.
I am a beggining programming student, so I all I have learned so far is assembler. I think it would be cool to have a windows program that made output line coding easier.
Like you type
(totline)
Total: XXXXXX returns: XXX
(totalo) (reto)
and the program outputs:
TOTLINE DS 0CL133
DC CL16''
DC CL5'TOTAL:'
DC CL1
TOTALO DS CL6
DC CL10
DC CL8'RETURNS:'
DC CL1''
RETO DS CL3
DS CL83''
Then you would be able to drag the fields around and the numbers would automatically change, then when you have it the way you want you can paste it into the mainframe telnet program.
I guess thats a silly idea. Its too late anyway, my assembler class ends in a week. (I better quit surfing and get to woork on my Labs :eek: )
How about a email checker program? i’ve yet to see a small email prog that could check a Exchange server. or perhaps a POP3 and yahoo acct.
Or a very customizable prog to convert units? Metric to std, various lengths, etc. i have one that uses listboxes but saw one with menubars might be better. have an option to store the last 5 units or convert from A to B then easily go back to A.
It looks like you are talking about a 4GL program for assembler. (A bit like dreamweaver for HTML but for assembler instead)
That involves parsing (checking, letter for letter, what is written and figuring out what was meant… or something) I have done a parser in the past (for sums) but it is a lot more difficult than it seems to the end-user. It would be the kind of thing that would take a long time or a whole team to do.
I know it’s too late, and it’s a difficult one, but you have given me something to think about - an interpreter,compiler,parser of somekind. Thankyou.
Keep em coming…
Your first idea is difficult because it involves interfacing with something I know little about (although there is some help in Builder so I’ll have a look)
Your second idea is great, very do-able. I could make it in a mater of minutes, and then spend hours improving it, adding bells and whistles (so to speak)
Okay, I’m probably going to sound incredibly odd here, but I’d love to have more hashing programs. For instance, one may take different hashes of a file, like MD5 or SHA-1, and have a nice GUI to use them with. Or, something that I haven’t seen anywhere else, a program that takes hashes only of the file, and not of any extraneous data. This is important to me, as often files such as MP3s will be the same from person to person, but have different ID tags, making them appear as if they are different files.
Another thing I’d like to see is nice pretty front-ends for some of the higher-level compression available. I’ve found some absurdly good compression mechanisms that have shown up in no mainstream programs, yet they’re all run from the DOS Prompt. Although many prefer it that way, I’ve always found the ability to use things like WinZip and the like far easier and more convienent.
This is a great opportunity! I’ve been thinking about different programs I’d write for awhile now.
How about a sig/quotation program that returns a line relevant to the content of a post or email?
It would need a database of sigs (maybe with associated keywords), and pick the most appropriate one for the text you paste into a box, based on the number of matching words. For that matter, you might be able to find a free thesaurus someplace (an old Roget is at Project Gutenberg, but the format isn’t very convenient) and use that to check for relevance.
Assemblers require very little parsing as the format of the lines are fixed.
An interesting idea is to write an OSS WYSIWYG editor that outputs HTML/CSS files.
So I’ve taken a picture with my digital camera.
I load it on the computer only to find I wasn’t holding the camera level.
I have software that will rotate the picture some number of degrees, but I have to guess at the rotation. Is the horizon at 7.8 degrees or 7.9 degrees? How should I know? I have to try about 20 different angle before I find the right one.
I need a program that will display my jpg picture on screen, fitting it to screen, and allow me to select the two ends of a horizon line, and it should tell me the exact angle of the line I’ve selected.
I have already done some stuff with angles in builder. Yours should be an easy one.
I think, what I’ll do, is if/when I create the programs I will upload them to my website and then post the link here in the SDMB.
I probably can’t do much until saturday or next wednesday as I am on nights and my brother and his family are staying at my house, I have little spare time til then.
No hurry.
Glad to be inspirational.
I’m a programmer myself. The projects at work never end and so I never get a feeling of accomplishment. I just want some project I can do on a Sunday afternoon.
As the years pass, picking a project that’s challenging that can be completed in a couple hours gets harder and harder.
I’ve been saving up this one. It seems to be the perfect size for success without being trivial, and also useful.