14 Ideas for Fun Python Free Time Projects

Python is a powerful programming language that can be used for all sorts of fun projects. In this video, I share 14 ideas for things you can do in your free time using Python. From beginner-friendly tasks to complex challenges, there’s something here for everyone.

🔖 Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:08 Project criteria
2:22 Simple calculator
4:03 To-do list application
6:07 Weather application
7:36 Web scraper
9:03 Simple game
11:27 Automations
13:12 Chatbot
15:42 Markdown editor and viewer
17:20 Budget tracker
19:02 Sentiment analysis tool
20:33 Duplicate code detection
22:01 Dependency analyzer
23:19 Metrics collector
25:11 Refactoring helper
27:09 Outro

#arjancodes #softwaredesign #python

[mtbztqo]

Thanks Arjan, now I just need the free time!

[sjmarel]

I'm writing an ETL orchestrator that accepts configuration files to describe the steps of the ETL. We currently use it in production and have facilitated the creation and maintenance of our processes. It accepts multiple extractions and can be extended with custom transformations that are called through the config file. It has been an incredible experience and I have learnt a lot designing and writing the code.

[michaelandersen]

I've loved watching your stuff for ages... I've worked in python since 2.7, but there are always new aspects/ideas/approaches I get from your vids.

That said...

The barbie and the hacksaw raised the bar.

Epic!

[CalvinJKu]

Most of my past work are data science / machine learning related where most of the data I used were ETL'ed by my collegues and I never had to take care of the data pipelines or maintaining databases. Recently I started my own pet project which requires work around data ingestion, pipeline orchestration, scheduling, data modeling / database design and I just realized how little I knew about these things. I'm still far from being an expert in data engineering but over the months I've really learned a lot. It's a fascinating experience.

[dezalator]

Straight to "favorites". I am actually a fairly experienced developer, but I love to do simple projects (and not only simple!) from time to time to keep in touch with different aspects. And I am out of ideas pretty often, so more videos on this topic will be greatly appreciated!

[_DRMR_]

This list of projects is fantastic for pretty much any programming language!
During covid I found myself picking up an abandoned python 2 transpiler project called hvcc, and have been updating it to py3.7+ and more modern features. Since it's highly domain specific (converting Pure Data DSP graphs to a c/c++ DSP framework called heavy) I've been learning so many different language features, high and low level operations, extensions, interfaces, and integrations. It has been quite a deep dive into a mesmerizing variety of software development tooling and compute architectures.

[codewithkelyn]

I built a news aggregation platform that learns the user's preferences and recommends new articles for them to be able to read and interact with. Thanks Arjan for the great work.

[PlntLsS]

Arjan teaches so well, if he made a tutorial on vscode extentions, it actually might make me want to use JS.

[tehdusto]

11:10 - most emotionally stable person in the netherlands

[geriiberii]

Right now working on several report (excel to excel/powerbi) automation projects and on a text analysis project, where past audit results are matched to possibly new audit requirements

[EddyWydraTV]

I am Learning python for like 6 months, but at a very fast rate. Solving logical problems is something I love to do. I’m thinking of looking for a job. Right now I’m creating a terminal UI that allows you to send commands, allows you to use file or http as an argument, and pulls data asynchronously and transfers json data into a database. The terminal provides you with logging, how many http requests were successful, downloaded in one second.
Do you think a project like this would be a good enough application in a portfolio to land my first job as a junior Python developer? I already learned most of the standard library, use OOP, inheritance. I use some outside modules.

[ImOnUToob]

Perfect video at a perfect time for me! I started teaching myself how to code in Python just for fun back in 2016 and then moved into learning JavaScript for a while. But then I went through some big life changes in late 2018 and stepped away. My interest has been completely rekindled though here lately and I’m back to it currently making a text based RPG as a first project. I know the code is sloppy and inefficient, but for now that’s sort of the point for me I think. When I refactor something that makes 10 other things much easier it’s extremely rewarding.

Arjan - your target audience is above me, but your videos have by far been my favorite in showing me more of the “end goal” or how I should really be trying to structure my code. Other tutorials, videos, and content creators are just too “tutorial/textbook” and it’s really hard to translate some of that to my code. Keep doing what you do, I’m really enjoying it. More code roasts please? Haha

[versacebroccoli]

Thanks for the ideas. I'm gonna make a script to backup my /usr/local/bin and finally learn how to make a cron job.

[sulweaver]

If we do the last 4 projects, they can actually be combined into a single one which can earn money!
The dependency analyzer and metrics collector are the ones I'd start with in the same order. I would like to visualise the dependency graphs of all imports, classes, functions, variables across connected files throughout a project folder structure.
And the code metrics is a really good idea if done right. I often face this problem of overwhelming experience when I freshly come across a git repository and if this tool can generate a report clubbing with the dependency analyzer, it can help beginners to make better decisions which open source project not to get into and also give them a high first standard of best practices to work with early in their career.

[edauardovela]

Thanks for the nice ideas Arjan! I have been programming Python for several years but most of the time I lack the inspiration to come up with project ideas. I guess because I actually enjoy a lot working with other programmers, so if someone out there is reading this and if you are a programmer, let's chat :)

[zikomo]

Can you make a video for good side project ideas to get a job as a Python backend developer or fullstack with Python(Flask, Django) ??

[VitalijsKomasilovs]

Thanks for the video and nice ideas.
Maybe it will inspire other, I recently did N-body simulator (kind of stellar dynamics). Actually making working prototype is not that hard (couple of math formulas and pygame for rendering). The most challenging part is to make it work fast enough.

[Deadlious]

I'm very keen on privacy, and I don't like sharing much info on wide public platforms/social medias. I was searching for a safe way to share some content with relatives and close friends easily, without the risk of public leakage. So, I made my own media platform with basic user management in order to provide access to whom I want. E.g. If I go to a vacation and I take some photos and videos, now I can upload those to my platform and share them with friends and family, without worrying who might see them.

[iPrometheusQ]

How about small project, that you start on github and the community can contribute? This way you could make video series with code reviews on interesting feature branches and refactorings, debugging etc. In a way we could learn a lot about the process of shared porgramming in a group and contributing to open source projects.

[michaelollom]

I'm actually interested in creating my own Python Web Framework to focus on a variety of implementations interface builds.