How to come up with a project for pumping specific skills?

Question

Perl

The traditional solution is to find a problem that you need to solve and try to solve it with the right skill. For example, I recently tried to write one script in Python instead of the commonly used Perl. I haven't written in Python before.

In some cases, you can just write a demo. But now I want to upgrade C++, primarily STL and Boost. But the problem is that there are no suitable tasks (we don’t use C ++ at work at all), and demo examples in the style of “well, here we sort the elements of the list” are somehow quite miserable.

Advise how to be.

Answer 1

As for the analysis and upgrading of skills:
For a game developer, I saw advice to try to write simple games (like Tetris), but from scratch to the bitter end.
It was hinted that after that, all sorts of epic plans to create a mega-MMO disappear somewhere.
As for the STL, at the beginning of mastering C ++ I tried to write bicycles and compare memory consumption and speed with the implementation in STL.

Answer 2

Join an OpenSource project? There are so many of them ... you can always find something for specific skills.

Answer 3

Can you write in Python? Do you want to use boost?
There is a solution: write the construction of a social graph on VKontakte (well, or Habr for a start). The boost just has a library for working with graphs.
If it’s not enough, link the Twitter/Facebook/Habr social graph with the VKontakte graph. And not just a link on the page means linking, but full identification of the node by the edge.
Plenty of opportunities for self-development.

Answer 4

Here is an interesting and useful task for you: using C++ alone, earn $1,000,000