Ask HN: Concurrent Programming Projects for beginners?

2 points by hhimanshu 11 years ago | 2 comments

I have spent a lot of time writing web applications from backend-to-front end (I am sure there is lot more to learn there), but I got bored and wanted to learn something I never learned(and wanted to).

I am talking about Concurrent Programming. I mostly work with Java but in order to learn Concurrency, I picked Erlang and I want to invest my time learning this language and do some projects to further strengthen my understanding.

I admit, that I love Erlang for the parts I read so far. I like syntax(its not verbose) and a very different approach to programming.

I want to ask what projects a beginner can work on related to Concurrent Programming Model. I am blank headed right now and need guidance.

Please enlighten me with your advices and experience. Books, resources, videos, etc all are very much welcomed here.

Thanks a lot in advance

colefichter 11 years ago |

Huh, I can't believe there haven't been _any_ replies on this. Sorry about that.

Here are a few ideas:

* Improve/extend the shoutcast server in Joe's book "Programming Erlang" (1st edition; I haven't read the 2nd edition)

* Make a simple dropbox tool to sync folders across machines

* Make a simple map/reduce tool to learn about that paradigm

* Build a chat server with web interface (this one is fairly common)

* Interested in VOIP? Try making something that can allow you to make VOIP calls between computers in your house

* Build a web server (also common enough to find lots of examples and tutorials)

* Twitter clone

* Log aggregator

* BitTorrent client

* Distributed hash table or NoSQL database

* Something to stream data (logs, newsfeeds, analytics) to or from multiple clients

* ....

I hope this helps :)

[ Edit: formatting is really hard on HN... :( ]

hhimanshu 11 years ago | |

colefichter, Thank you so much for your help. I really appreciate it. I would try to build one of the projects