Disclaimer: This article was written few years ago and may no longer be relevant as software engineering has changed a lot in the last few years. This is what may be more relevant now: Future of Software Engineering - Gaurav ChandakBuilding development projects is essential to become a better software engineer. It also helps your resume in the shortlisting process.
I've listed down some basic project ideas to start with followed by big projects that might help you learn and get a job.
Once you build any project, you might want to get some feedback from the developer community.
First let's look at the things that you should not do. Most students do the following and their resumes never get shortlisted. Most common projects rarely add anything to your resume and might leave a bad impression as well.
- Do not copy someone else's code from GitHub and show it as your project.
- Do not create a project that just uses 10 lines of library code. Most students do this for ML/AI projects.
- Do not look for "resume-worthy" projects. To get your resume shortlisted, you need to have projects that help your resume stand-out when compared to other applicants. Building a common project won't help you stand-out.
- ML/AI projects are not the coolest projects for your resume. It has become too mainstream to help you stand-out.
How to decide which project to pick up?
Instead of listing out common projects, I am listing down some generic ideas with examples of real products. You should think of specific ideas and products based on these ideas and examples.
You can either think of unique ideas or just build a clone of a popular product. Just make sure that you do everything from conceptualization to building to deployment.
Most of the ideas mentioned below can be built as a website, a Android/iOS mobile app, or both. You can build any of the projects mentioned below as a final year project as well.
Start with one or more of the basic ideas followed by big project ideas based on the available time.
Basic Project Ideas
These ideas are useful while you are learning development or have a very short timeline and need something on your resume. These are the projects that you should start with before moving to bigger projects.
Building these should generally take you 3-4 days if you know the required technologies. If you are still learning then build while you are learning.
Portfolio Website
This is the first website that you should build. Every engineer should have a portfolio website and should try to keep it updated. You need to know HTML, CSS, and JS to build this. Keep it clean and simple. You can host your portfolio website on GitHub Pages/Netlify.
Personal Blog
After building a portfolio, add a personal blog to your website. Start writing articles based on whatever you are learning. You can use something open-source and integrate it with your website or you can build your own.
Utility Web Apps or Mobile Apps
Build utility web apps or mobile apps that you or others might want to use. Think of basic websites/apps that you or people around you generally use.
Some examples:
- Online Calculator
- Online Timer
- Conversion Tool
- JSON Parser, URL Encoder/Decoder, Escape Tool, etc
- Speed Test
- URL Shortener (Requires Backend as well)
- To-do list
Read complete requirements here: Utility Apps | Frontend Developement Project Ideas
Basic Games
- Board games like Sudoku, Tic-Tac-Toe, 2048, etc.
- Card games like BlackJack, Solitaire, etc.
- Basic number or word games.
RSS Reader/Data Visualizer
- RSS Reader which reads and displays from different RSS feeds (articles, news, podcasts, etc).
- Fetches data from public APIs and displays it with a good UI. Example: Developer Profile using GitHub data.
- You might explore adding recommendation and personalization to create a bigger project.
Big Project Ideas
You might want to add more useful features to your basic projects or you can pick up from the below list. The websites or apps that you or others use might help you provide more ideas.
Education Apps
- Course website/app. Example: Courses made from Youtube videos.
- Quiz Application or another evaluation platform. Example: Duolingo
Rating and Review Application
Build a website or mobile app where users can rate and review certain products.
Examples:
- IMDb: Movies
- Goodreads: Books
- Zomato: Restaurants
- Practo: Doctors
- Tripadvisor: Hotels/Destinations
- Glassdoor: Companies
- Google/Facebook/Yelp: Businesses
- Amazon: E-commerce products
Read complete requirements here: Rating and Review Website | Fullstack Developement Project Ideas
OTT (Over-the-top) Platform
Create an OTT Platform like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hotstar, etc.
Ideas:
- You can use Youtube or other free videos on the platform.
- Add ratings and reviews.
- You can add movie trailers instead of full videos.
- OTT for short movies can be a good idea.
- Optionally add recommendations.
Real-Time Communication
Create a real-time communication tool that can be used for communication or collaboration.
Ideas:
- Chat (1:1 or Group) like WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Discord
- Video Calling like Zoom, Conference Calls, YouTube Live
- Interview Collab Tools (Chat, Video, Whiteboard, Editor)
QnA Platform
A community-driven question and answer platform like Quora, StackOverflow, Reddit, Discourse. etc.
Social Media
Build a social media platform like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
Follow this order for adding features. Doing just the first one is good enough.
- Start with a sharing platform where people can share media (image, video, text, links, etc) with buttons to share them. Example: Product Hunt, Hacker News, early days of Instagram, and Pinterest.
- Add a way to like/react.
- Add a way to comment.
- Add a way to send notifications on engagement.
- Add a common news feed.
- Add a way to follow others or add as friends.
- Add a personalized news feed.
E-commerce
Most of the websites or apps that we interact with are e-commerce platforms. If a website allows you to buy something online, it is an e-commerce website. You can buy hands-on courses from workat.tech which makes this website an e-commerce website as well.
E-commerce is one of the best projects that you can do. Examples:
- General Shopping: Amazon, Flipkart
- Food: Swiggy, Zomato
- Flight Tickets: MakeMyTrip
- Movie Tickets: BookMyShow
- Hotels: OYO
- Grocery: BigBasket, Grofers
- Courses: Coursera, Udemy, workat.tech, etc.
E-commerce platforms have very domain-specific designs and challenges. The core e-commerce lifecycle is generally the same across platforms. If you learn that, you can create different e-commerce websites across domains.
Follow this order in adding features. Doing even the first three is good enough.
- Create a product detail page/landing page for a digital product.
- Add a way to check out that product for free.
- Integrate with a payment gateway like Razorpay and allow payments.
- Create a product listing page.
- Add search and filters.
- Add ratings and reviews.
- Add recommendations.
Read complete requirements here: E-Commerce Platform | Fullstack Development Project Ideas
Other Good Project Ideas
Expense/Account Management
Ideas:
- Personal Expense Management like Walnut
- Collaborative Expense Management like Splitwise
- Business Account Management like Khatabook
You could read SMS or email for automation.
Fantasy Sports
Fantasy Sports Application like Dream11 for any sports.
Project Management
Build a project management application like Trello, Jira, etc. This will help you learn a lot about UI design and backend code design.
Algorithm Visualizer
This project will generally require you to write a lot of code to create visualizers for different algorithms. Try to create reusable components to do this. This will help you get hands-on with a language and might also help you revise DS/Algo.
Content Management System
Build a content management system where anyone can set up their blog.
Ideas:
- Using an MD Editor or a WYSIWYG Editor will make the experience very good.
- Allowing subscribing and sending newsletters like Substack can make it a great product.
Note-taking Application
Build a note-taking application similar to Notion, Roam Research, etc. You do not need to add all the functionalities. Just a few core ones and it would be a pretty good project.
Matchmaking Application
Create a matchmaking app (dating, job-search, etc). Idea: Tinder Clone.
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As you can see, I have used a few ideas across multiple product ideas. Once you can build a basic version of the common ones, you can use them across multiple projects without much effort.
I hope that you liked the project ideas and would choose one or more of these for building projects. Once you add any of the big projects to GitHub, you can send me the link on WhatsApp at
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Further Reading:
- Software Engineering Roadmap: Getting Started
- Get a Software Engineering Job/Internship - Ultimate Guide
- SDE I Interview Preparation: The Ultimate Guide
- How to crack interviews at product-based companies?
- Resume best practices for product-based companies
- How to get job referrals on LinkedIn?
- How to get a recruiter's attention on LinkedIn?
