macOS Cocoa project ideas for a beginner

[capnbishop]

I'm an experienced programmer learning Cocoa, and it's coming along well enough, but I know that I won't retain any of it unless I put it to work. I would like to have a few simple projects that I can work on to put Cocoa to use, but am having trouble coming up with many good ideas, or at least any that inspire me at all. I can surely come up with some interesting project ideas in general, but they're all more advanced than I'm ready to take on right now.

Simply, I'm asking for a range simple project ideas that would be good for someone new to Cocoa. Stuff like a tabbed RTF editor, a simple data organizer, a chat client, etc.

Please don't suggest that I find an open source project. I don't want to jump into someone else's code; at least not yet.

Thank you.

 

[MrFusion]

I'm an experienced programmer learning Cocoa, and it's coming along well enough, but I know that I won't retain any of it unless I put it to work. I would like to have a few simple projects that I can work on to put Cocoa to use, but am having trouble coming up with many good ideas, or at least any that inspire me at all. I can surely come up with some interesting project ideas in general, but they're all more advanced than I'm ready to take on right now.

Simply, I'm asking for a range simple project ideas that would be good for someone new to Cocoa. Stuff like a tabbed RTF editor, a simple data organizer, a chat client, etc.

Please don't suggest that I find an open source project. I don't want to jump into someone else's code; at least not yet.

Thank you.

A stock program, not limited to apple shares?

 

[derryquinn]

OS X is seriously lacking a native Cocoa MSN client.

Check out aMSN, it's got the features we need on OS X for use with MSN, but it's slow, and awkward. Cocoa-fying it would be a dream come true, and I would be more than happy to donate to the cause as many users would if you were to release it

Good look with whatever you choose,
Derry.

 

[GenghisKhan]

Well

The last 10 minutes or so I've been working on a calculator. It is funny if it would actually calculate stuff, but I have the interface almost worked out.
It is funny to work on a thing you might actually use.

 

[Catfish_Man]

OS X is seriously lacking a native Cocoa MSN client.

This is not a beginner project by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[MacRohde]

Hiya.

I'm also an experienced programmer (.NET is my day job) learning Cocoa/Objective-C.

Some ideas could be (these are not all simple from a programming perspective per se, but their UI, i.e. Cocoa, requirements can be quite simple):

A simple program to organize and viewing ebooks (PDFs), you can also add some calls to Amazon web service to reviews and other details for the books. And later you could possibly add some cool Core Animation stuff for browsing through the books.

A stock program calling a simple web service for stock quotes.

A very simple DPD-8 emulator, or other emulator of a simple computer. Fx. for Donald Knuths assembler.

A simple terrain generator.

A simple drawing application - fx. one for drawing CD covers or labels or whatever.

A nice front end for some other developer framework, fx. a small Mono.NET IDE, PHP IDE etc.

If you know your math you could do a front end to some math/numeric library.

Some simple turn-based board game.

Some MIDI stuff.

A kids program: learn math etc.

A simple audio editing program (using OpenAL perhaps?).

A client for organizing your delicious bookmarks. (generally there are a lot of web sites/services that could use a nice client application)

A simple file diff program.

A simple coding/encrypt program.

 

[mstath]

I am in the exact same position. I learned Objective-C and Cocoa on my own but had no outlet and trouble coming up with ideas for projects.

I remember since I first saw the Mandlebrot Set I was hooked. I decided to write a program to generate and explore strange attractors in the Mandlebrot/Julia Set.

The program generates the set points and stores them into an array. When you drag the mouse over the view, it queries the set for that point and returns an NSBezierPath of that point for a specified iteration and strokes it in the view.

It gives an animated effect. You drag the mouse over the plotted set and it dynamically creates these "strange" patterns; they are the path of each point as its reiterated through the equation.

I think it would be a decent app to possibly spur kid's interest in the "magic of math". But now I'm bored and need to get on to the next project...