Projects for a Beginner

You should choose something that you have fun doing, best thing would be that you can use it.
The project does not have to be too simple, you do not build the foundation of an empire, code that last for decades. So just make errors and stupid things.

Whats really fun and useful is something embedded:

Don’t be afraid, nerves makes that really easy.

Not sure if that’s what you’re looking for, but currently there is the Advent of Code where you have to solve small riddles daily. They are quite a fun way to test your brain and your Elixir knowledge without many “dependencies”.

(You can also work through them not daily and can also do past years.)

For the first project in a new language, I will port some of my old ones. So you don’t need to worry about domain knowledge and can focus on the implementation techniques.

Good advice. But beware: I did that with some python code that’s in production and has to stay there. And now I can’t stand working on the original, because the Elixir version is so much better.

Yeah. On the bright side, you may uncover some obscure bug in the original implementation by doing it in a very different language. I know I did.

I really don’t have all those needed things in this book. It’s way too much my budget for a “simple”(because it’s not simple) project.

I’ve already tried Advent of Code, but it’s also too hard. I could only do questions 1 and 2.

What do you mean by “port”? I dunno the language and the words used here.

I mean to rewrite some programs you have written in other languages. If you don’t have any then you can discard this advice.

I’m guessing that by port they mean, recreate a project you did in a familiar language.

A project that is fun and not that hard would be to send/print messages around in an Erlang cluster.

Also, decoding mp3 headers is very nifty (checkout joe Armstrong’s book). It sounds dorky but it’s basically applicable to any binary format.

Anything embedded is fun if you have a raspberry pi lying around with a couple of sensors (you can use the excellent book about the weather station even without the exact components they advise).

Apart from that there are quite a few great books that could inspire you such as “Elixir in action”, “real time phoenix” (a bit webby, but great), “genetic algorithms in elixir “ and many more. Erlang books (eg “designing for scalability with Erlang and otp”, and of course “Programming Erlang”) are great resources for inspiration.

Chris McCords book about macros is also filled with fun stuff.