The Importance of Working on Projects

by Joshua Packard

I personally love reading books on subjects. When I decided to start working on programming, there were a lot of options. There are books, videos on YouTube, online courses, and all kinds of other resources to help you learn a multitude of programming languages and other computer technologies. I personally prefer books, but one thing I have learned while starting to learn programming is the power that having a project to work on reinforces and boosts what you are learning in books or videos or tutorials or whatever.

Having a project that you can achieve at your current level will greatly help your learning. While you are using other resources you will be thinking about whether what you are studying applies to the project you are working on. For my first project, I chose to make a Tic Tac Toe game in Python. I was going to try to make a graphical based one but thought it would hinder me from actually starting the project so I just decided to see if I could start making a text based version. I do have a completed working Tic Tac Toe game. I did it in steps. But I took what I was learning in books and other documents and applied it to something simple. And now I have a working Tic Tac Toe game, that I can show to others, and is playable with 2 players or 1 player with a computer controlled opponent.

I started just doing what I knew I could do, just printing the game board to the screen. When I figured out how to do that, I thought about what the next step would be, and asked myself if I could do that with the knowledge I had learned so far. And when I came to something where I had to look up a keyword or a function or whatever, I checked my books or online to see how to specifically do what I wanted. But what having this project did was it took what I was reading and allowed me to make it more concrete. I took the principle of what I wanted to do and applied it to some real goal involved in a project.

I am in the process of trying to decide on what to do for my second project, but having done this first project boosted my confidence a lot. I wasn’t sure if I could do it, but I did succeed, step by step. It is nothing monumental, but it is a small success. Now I can decide on something that involves more complex programming principles. While coding the Tic Tac Toe program, I also highlighted to myself some of the programming principles that I didn’t quite understand. So looking forward I am thinking about those things which I could’ve used in my Tic Tac Toe program maybe to make the code cleaner or more concise, and I am paying attention to those subjects in the books I am reading and the videos I am watching. Having the project helped me to see what I am currently capable of as well as shining a spotlight on those subjects that I am not comprehending so well. So I get to check off some concepts as being totally grasped by me, but also have a better look at what I will have to explore and play around with in the future.

I mainly wanted to emphasize to those who are learning or are considering learning a programming language, to really think about projects you want to work on. Pick something easy at first, something that interests you. Something that will apply what you do understand, and help you plan for what you are going to work on in the future. Having concrete projects to work on will really establish your skills, and speed up your progress, as well as give you some confidence. Even something simple. Being able to know you can program a working projects is an accomplishment! You have done something that not everyone has done! Don’t minimize that success. Even if you never program another project, you will always have the success you had with this project.

So books are great, videos are great. But once you start getting into a programming language, start to think about what sort of project or program you want to work on to apply and solidify what you are learning, and also to survey the future of you programming path.