I suspect I'm not the only one, but often times when I'm trying to learn something new, it helps to have a project to act as a driver, and to establish a goal. I was wondering if others would like to share some of their "made this for the purpose of learning that" kind of projects.
For example....
- When I wanted to learn how to deal with Java's "swing" GUI system, I made a multi-window version of "Qwirkle", which is a tile-laying table top game kind of similar in flavor to dominoes. The game is super simple, but it's actually kinda a fun little thing, and is very GUI-heavy and logic-light.
- When first learning about neural networks, I made a top-down tank "game" (which in reality was more of a screen saver, since all characters were computer-controlled by default) that gave me an interesting avenue to tinker with parameters.
- When learning the windows FS driver systems, I made a C# program that allows for software-intercept of file system activity via plug-ins (which is actually still something I use). I still use a matured version of this software to do stuff like redirecting file IO writes of legacy software result files to standard in of results parsing software, without having to write to disk first.
What cool stuff have you made for the purpose of learning something?