[anonytrary]

If you are trying to think of an idea, you're already doing it wrong. The best ideas are motivated by problems you encounter yourself, not by trying to think of ideas. This is the biggest mistake you see with 20-something founders. Best way to come up with ideas is to use existing solutions and realize how shitty they are. Pretty much every single company was formed this way.

> They are programmers, not creative after all.

Damn, this is a bold comment on HN. Since when does profession determine how creative you are? I've met "programmers" and "geeks" who are more creative than "artists". Your profession has little to do with your innate creativity -- it just determines how you are able to express that creativity.

Unpopular opinion, but lists like this are stupid for people who are trying to build companies. You have to try things and be pissed off at the status quo to find real problems. Nobody is going to find real problems for you, in the same way that no quant school is going to reveal their hedge fund's trading strategy to you. Finding ideas in a list is the last advice I would give to anyone. If it's public, it's probably not a profitable idea.

[mobiuscog]

> Finding ideas in a list is the last advice I would give to anyone. If it's public, it's probably not a profitable idea.

Why do they have to be profitable ? Many programmers like solving challenges to learn and have fun - it's not all about money. Advent of Code is a great example of this.

[anonytrary]

> Many programmers like solving challenges to learn and have fun

If you could choose between doing a contrived homework problem and learning something VS. creating something original and learning something, you should always choose the latter, hands down. Learning on the job or while you are solving a unique problem that you have is always preferred to doing a homework problem.

[username90]

If you have the know how to create something original then this article isn't for you.

[anonytrary]

You overestimate the skill required to be original. Anyone who has the know-how to do ray-tracing, web browsers, and trading bots from scratch has a leg-up on the bootcamp coders who are getting paid $200k to work at Dropbox. Don't waste your time doing shit other people have already done. It's the best advice any of these kids will ever get, so I completely disagree with the associate professor who wrote the article. Take it or leave it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[username90]

You often get a lot of ideas when you build old things from scratch that can let you create novel things based on it. Knowing how to build it is not a substitute for actually building it.

[watwut]

Jesus, plenty of programmers are not creative. Majority really don't have problem they need to solve for themselves. They however want to learn and challenge themselves with variety of exercises.

Why would you took offense in that or why would you assume that everyone is trying to build company is beyond me.

In any case, this list is literally for programmers. It is not for founders. It is not meant to earn you money. It is list of small enough challenging projects that force you to learn new technical skills.

[anonytrary]

Well I must be biased, because at my last job, at least 80% of the programmers were really creative and brilliant people who were also highly skilled artists and musicians, lol. Perhaps I was just surrounded by extremely wonderful people :)

[ufmace]

IMO, this is confusing completely different things. This is a list of projects to try if you want to learn more advanced programming. They're all handy if you're an entry-level developer looking to improve your skills, or want to really dig into a new language with something more involved than Hello World, or are just bored. Nobody ever said they had any connection to profitable business ideas.

[T_O_T_O]

For a beginning programmer, these could be good projects. For someone with a lot of experience, I mostly agree with your comment.

[anonytrary]

I agree, it makes sense to do homework problems as someone who is learning a skill for the first time.