ideas

How do you manage all your projects and ideas?

I have a billion potential ideas running through my head. About five of those I have actually started and have become "side projects" in addition to my "day job". Some are further along than others, and a few are even demonstrable. The problem I have is that one always takes attention away from the others. I don't want to give up any of ...

Designing a threaded commenting system

What would be the best way to design a threaded commenting system so that it doesn't hammer the database? ...

How would you design a very "Pythonic" UI framework?

I have been playing with the Ruby library "shoes". Basically you can write a GUI application in the following way: Shoes.app do t = para "Not clicked!" button "The Label" do alert "You clicked the button!" # when clicked, make an alert t.replace "Clicked!" # ..and replace the label's text end end This made me think - how...

The best way to make a new site known?

You have a cool new idea on a revolutionary new internet site (e.g. one that makes ebay look obsolete or something that might make you surpass google). However how would you start to make it known in the net as the best idea is worthless as long as nobody knows it and uses it. What's your recommendation? Online Ads? Spaming blogs? But i...

How do You Come Up With New Ideas?

Whenever I've come up with a new idea of something interesting to code, it has always been the "Eureka!" moment type deal. How do you come up with great programming ideas, and if you are having trouble coming up with something, how do you get past that block? ...

Coming up with Creative Ideas for Games

I came across a very good game called Light Bot. It is a game which is good for beginner programmers. I am about to create a game, but, I am lacking good ideas (like the Light Bot idea). How do you guys come up ideas for your games or software? edit: I am probably going to use Allegro/C++ ...

Why do we still program with flat files?

Why are flat text files the state of the art for representing source code? Sure - the preprocessor and compiler need to see a flat file representation of the file, but that's easily created. It seems to me that some form of XML or binary data could represent lots of ideas that are very difficult to track, otherwise. For instance, you ...

Asp.net Project Ideas?

Hello, I've recently decided to step-up my knowledge in ASP.NET (I haven't coded in ASP.NET for about 2 years or so, and much has changed since then). I want to work with the new MVC framework, try jQuery, LINQ to SQL and basically just to catch up with most of the up-to-date features. To do that, I want to start a nice project in ASP...

Where do you go for inspiration outside of technical arenas?

Maybe the title is not the best wording, and I haven't seen any similar questions (though I may have missed them). Outside of 'keeping current' by reading tech news, Wired, etc, where do you go for non-technical inspiration on how to think about problems at hand in new/different ways? For example, assembling a LEGO set, or doing an oil...

Low cost embedded project

I am a student. I've done an embedded system "home automation" project using GSM and I could succeed. Now I've got to do an academic project, and my brain is blank. Can anyone suggest some new ideas? ...

Finding ideas for a startup / switching gears during development

I found and reviewed a couple related questions, but I don't think this one has been asked. I also read Paul Graham's essays with some regularity. However, the essays seem to be centered around what to do once you have an idea, rather than how to find them in the first place. I'm familiar with some of the regional startup groups, weeken...

What's the program you've really wanted to write but never found the time?

I think that the best, and maybe the only, thing to do to get better as a programmer is to program, i.e. to create new stuff, build new apps, solve new problems. But during our daily jobs we (well I can only speak for myself :)) usually do a lot of maintainance programming, debugging, support and other work that could be categorized as ...

What is the worst software idea you've had?

It can be from anything from reinventing Notepad to something so worse that no one can imagine. So? What kind of skeleton do you have in your closet? ...

What do you do when researching for a project?

I'm about to undertake a personal project, but I'm having trouble coming up with background information in the problem domain. I have some experience, and Google has provided me with more, but I'm still not sure that I have all of the information I need. If you have ever been in this situation, either at work or on your own, what did you...

Ideas for OpenSource CMS in ASP.NET MVC

I am in the process of collecting ideas for building an opensource CMS based on ASP.net framework. I have choosen ASP.NET MVC with Jquery as the tool to develop this. I have made this as community wiki. Background: Most of the good CMS that is available is built on PHP, though off late CMS built on ASP.net framework seems to be croppi...

Do you know any open-souce free Idea/Suggestion Management tool?

I include myself in a group of thinkers in this "small" company. In order to gather suggestions and improvement ideas from my development team members, I was put in charge of mounting an Idea/Suggestion Management system. Some of the enjoyable features are: provide user based (possible anonymous) suggestions mechanism provide voting m...

Short on ideas: new web app suggestion

Hello. You know, sometimes it happens that you run out of ideas for your next hobbistic programming project, and then... you ask for help on StackOverflow :) So: what would it be your suggestion for a rocking web application (it may be implemented using Google App Engine and it may use the new fresh Google Friend Connect APIs) to develo...

know any 'Profession Chooser' webapp?

I've been thinking about coding a simple web application (for fun) and just wanted to know, if anyone already did that before (google found nothing close). So the idea is simple: a website where professionals in different areas leave responses about their profession: why they like it, why you should choose it, advices on how and from wh...

What optimization problems do you want to have solved?

I love to work on AI optimization software (Genetic Algorithms, Particle Swarm, Ant Colony, ...). Unfortunately I have run out of interesting problems to solve. What problem would you like to have solved? ...

An ideas repository

Sometimes, during some downtime, I'll feel like doing some programming (I'm sick, I know), but I am short on ideas of what to do. Some other times, I'll have a great idea about what would make a brilliant software project (large or small), but won't have the time or inclination to actually make it. Very briefly looking around, I've seen...