What's a good topic for some real-life application?

Question

Hi I was assigned a project in my software engineering class. This is a semester long project so I'm not looking for something really easy. It's also a three hour course and the project is considered 30% of the grade only.

Here's the catch. The project has to be a real every day life application.

i.e. ticketing system for airline.

that's an example the professor gave us. I cannot think of something interesting that is useful the world. I have to implement the classical life cycle of software for this project.

Can you guys please shine me with your ideas?

Thank you.

Answer 1

How about a "blogging system"? Has good potential for meaty code in the front-end as well as the back-end, with a mix of technology requirements (JS, CSS, and HTML on the front end, SQL on the back-end).

Answer 2

For mine, I did a testing/attendance system for class. It allowed the professor/teacher to give exams, assignments and notes through the program, and worked with our student IDs to track attendance which allowed students to get what was missed if they were absent, and view results.

Another good way is to talk to professors and find out if someone is in need of an actual system, usually someone knows someone. Even if you do not do their system, you can model yours after it. (I ended up getting an internship at the State Patrol through this)

Answer 3

One of the first projects we did at Neumont University was a car repair shop POS (Point of Sale) system that handles customers, vehicles, work orders, and parts. Whether you're implementing a website or a desktop application it's a great small to mid-sized project, especially for one person.

Answer 4

What is something that interests you? Those are always the most fun.

Personally I like real time news analysis, algorithmic stock trading, and search technologies (web search, news search, blog search, topical search, etc...)

I would build a stock analyzer but pick something interests you. What kind of software so you say "That's interesting. I wonder how it works." and build that. If the topic interests you then you will build something that is awesome and will get a good grade and more importantly you will learn a lot.

Answer 5

How about a student scheduler that took the classes you want to take next semester, combined with your job/activities/etc and came up with an optimal schedule for the week that fit all of them in?

Answer 6

I found a good list of student projects here:

http://mindprod.com/project/projects.html

The site says they're "Java student projects", but they could conceivably be written in C++, C#, or any other OO language.

Answer 7

easiest thing to do would be to create a simplified version of an existing application. Some possibilities:

• Twitter
• Facebook (probably way too big, but could be a small subset)
• Flickr
• Simple personal finance (e.g.Quicken)
• Investing (stock quote/portfolio tracker)

There's tons of great possibilities, especially if it doesn't have to be something new/unique. Make sure to do something that plays to your technical strengths and personal interests. That way you'll do a better job and be less likely to grow bored with the project.

Answer 8

You could try to implement the Knapsack algorithm in relation to power distribution.

For example, create a power plant class, with attributes like type of fuel, efficiency, capacity. Create a community or city class, and within it sublcasses like geographical features, types of structures (e.g. a big city would have lots of skyscrapers, a suburban or rural community might have lots of single-level double-wide mobile homes or tiny office spaces), types of devices (huge HVAC systems, refrigerators, AC adapters, whole range of different devices requiring main power), and residents (population).

Initialize by randomly creating however many cities and power plants, then have your implementation of the knapsack algorithm ensure that power is distributed as efficiently as possible based on the power supply and demand. Maybe add a timeline feature, throw in a Godzilla™ or tornadoes or other factors that might take out a power plant and force you to engage another part of the algorithm to compensate in real time.

Answer 9

An events and facilities reservation system. Work with facilities management to get a list of every room on campus. Meeting rooms, conference rooms, classrooms, lunch areas, etc. Then put them in a database and let people use a webapp to reserve them.

Answer 10

What about a simple project management application? Or issue tracking system, where a client can report issues and the developers fix them? Think Sharepoint/Redmine/Trac/Basecamp etc.