December 30, 2025
DIY dreams, drama in the comments
Project ideas to appreciate the art of programming
73 side projects drop; fans cheer, skeptics cry “astroturfing,” and everyone asks if AI’s allowed
TLDR: A massive list of 73 build-it-yourself coding ideas landed, from BitTorrent clients to spreadsheets. The crowd split between excitement and side-eye—praising hands-on picks, slamming the odd difficulty jumps, accusing “astroturfing,” and asking if AI tools are fair to use—turning a project list into a full-blown comment brawl.
A mega-list of 73 side projects just thudded onto the internet, and the dev crowd instantly turned it into a spectator sport. One early fan, clearly riding the hype train, urged newbies to build a BitTorrent downloader—calling it approachable, rewarding, and packed with fun mini-quests. Cue the warm fuzzies for simple, hands-on learning.
Then the plot twist: confusion over difficulty “whiplash.” A top comment blasted the lineup as odd for jumping from “make your own memory manager” (that’s the thing that hands out computer memory) straight to “build a streaming protocol” (basically invent your own Netflix). The vibe? “This feels like going from ramen to running a restaurant.” Meanwhile, a familiar face showed up to drop a plug for Austin Henley’s list, sparking the age-old debate: inspiration or self-promo?
Spiciest moment: someone wondered aloud if the whole thread was marketing in disguise—“is this what the kids call ‘astroturfing’?”—and you could hear the eye-rolls across the timeline. Another commenter lobbed a German-language curveball: “AI usage verboten? Or erlaubt?” Translation: is using AI tools cheating or fair game for side projects? In short, the projects are cool, but the comments? Pure popcorn-fuel—part pep rally, part courtroom drama, part comedy special.
Key Points
- •The article lists 73 programming project ideas intended to teach core concepts through hands-on building.
- •Projects span systems, networking, distributed computing, algorithms, databases, information retrieval, UI, and games.
- •Examples include a BitTorrent client, container runtime, web crawler, DNS server, RAFT implementation, and procedural crosswords.
- •Algorithm-focused projects feature a Wordle solver, Optimal Transport-based deepfake, Myers’ diff, and audio fingerprinting.
- •Each project includes brief guidance and links to foundational resources such as papers, videos, or reference articles.