Let’s talk about side projects.
It is customary for hustling programmers to be working on something on the side. A “passion project,” it’s often called. Several students in my class are developing games as passion projects, one is developing a grocery shopping app, one to do with fitness, one hyper-specific project is focused on the buying and selling of unique Magic the Gathering Cards.
While enduring the travails of interviewing, we are told that the interviewer will most certainly ask us whether there is something on the side. They want to see that we are interested in coding, not simply as a money-making venture, but as a way of life. We don’t necessarily have to have a working version of our project, just a promising idea that drives us in our off hours.
I have had an idea since before the program began, but it was so dependent on databases that I haven’t really been able to get a foothold yet. Now, with the knowledge obtained this week, I can start the seeds of my Book Recommendation App.
Yes, there is certainly technology out there on the web that can take your past literary purchases and highlight other books you might want to buy. My idea is to be a bit more personal. I will take my fifteen years of book-selling experience into account.
It became clear to me some time ago that, although I have read extensively (over a thousand books, give or take) I do not recommend extensively. Because of my career background, people often ask me what they should read. But instead of taking into account everything I have read, I generally recommend the same four or five books over and over again. My App would solve my lame recommending skills through databases.
I plan to make a survey to be completed by the user. Then, they will be returned recommendations only from the books that I have personally read and stored in my database with a one or two line description of why I think they would like it. It will be more like a friend tipping you off on what to read rather than a giant robot under the sway of Amazon.
For this, I need a database. And now, after this week, I am finally equipped to build one.
From Retail to Programming 