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Ask HN: Concurrent Programming Projects for beginners?

by hhimanshu on 12/12/14, 11:38 PM with 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

  • by colefichter on 12/19/14, 8:26 PM

    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... :( ]