Let's start with the bottom of your post: Your current skills are certainly enough to start a project. You'll need to learn more as you go along, and that's the best way of learning for many people.

As for small things, I found generating some graphics to be quite rewarding. A bit basic geometry and SVG lets you quickly create graphics which give you visual feedback -- something I always liked. Once you learn about the trig functions (like sin, cos, tan) you can do almost everything in graphics you set your mind to, and playing with them in graphics gives you a much better feeling for them.

For the bigger projects I don't think I can give good recommendations, because it will have to be something that you want, otherwise your motivation will die out rather quickly.

But what I want to point is that with the Internet, very cool projects are possible with rather little programming knowledge. Open Street Map allows you to build earth maps according to your liking, Amazon provides meta data for very many books, Wikipedia has lists of famous persons, historical events by date etc. There's a huge load of data out there that you can turn into something awesome -- only your imagination is your limit.

And don't worry that everybody should use it -- if you want to use your own program, that's a very good start, maybe others will follow.

Thank You. Your post is basically what I was looking for. +1 for you.
--perl.j

Find an itch that you want to scratch. I am sure that you don't want to scratch my itch, and I don't want to scratch yours. If you have some vested interest in the project, it will help to motivate you to complete it.

Perhaps something to help with a club or group you are a part of. How about checking with your local college or ACM chapter to see if they have a high school programming contest. How about starting up one of your own. What about an application to manage the stats for the $favorite_sport team that you are interested in. Keeping track of rankings for your local tidleywinks club.

Great ideas. I especially liked the "Sport Stats" idea. I am a basketball player so maybe that would't be a bad idea.
--perl.j

Go to the basketball coach and ask what would be useful. That way, you will (a) avoid inventing a wheel that already exists, (b) start to experience the delight of writing for other people whose reaction is "I know that's what I said but it isn't what I meant". :-)

Regards,

John Davies

I would highly recommend Mind Performance Hacks and the supporting site by Ron Hale Evans.

He has a wide range of great strategies that help you improve memory, skills (including math) and organization. While it's not specifically a Perl book, there are a number of helpful tools provided written in Perl (Like creating a random theme generator for stories which could easily be used for essays). The author is a game designer and while he makes the book fun it's VERY useful. I would be surprised if you did not find at least a few tips in there that help you improve your study habits. :)

When I was in high school ... (never mind how many years ago, but let’s just say that the “personal” computers of the day were made by Altair, IMSAI, and SwTPC) ... I literally made up reasons to write computer programs.   I wrote programs to help me solve geometric proofs (which I despised, still do); programs for the local Explorer post of which I was a member; a program (my very first) to play the game of Fox, Chicken, Corn.   And that, minus perhaps the barnyard creatures and grain products, is precisely what I would suggest that you do ... continuously.

No matter what they tell you in school (or in training classes) about diplomas and certificates and blah-blah, computer software truly is one of the last remaining crafts, and the only way to learn how to do it is to do it.   A lot.   “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?”   “Practice, man! Practice!”

May programming always continue to engage your interest, reward your creativity, and enable you to always be proud of what you have done.   Such has been my experience, and so I consider myself to be very lucky, indeed.

So let me try to summarize this :-). "Make up your own problems"! LOL. Just kidding but this was great advise.
--perl.j

How about hacking into the school database to bump up your grades?

{ducks}

And what would happen if I got caught ;-). I would rather earn my straight As :-).
--perl.j

Code Kata

The martial arts concept of the "kata" (like in "The Karate Kid") can also apply to programming. Do the kata.

• Excellent Google Search
• http://codekata.pragprog.com/2007/01/code_kata_backg.html