Building real-world projects helps validate your skills and provides tangible evidence of your capabilities to potential employers or clients. In my experience most of the interviews I have had have high interest in the projects I have worked on. Especially if you are at the start of your career or you are looking for ways to grow your career, building projects can be very helpful. While it is best to research what kind of projects the company you are interested in is working on and make something that resembles that, these 5 project ideas can also make you more desirable.
- Applications with third-party API integrations
Third-party APIs are APIs provided by third parties generally, companies such as Facebook, Twitter, or Google to allow you to access their functionality and use it on your site. One of the most obvious examples is using Google Maps APIs to display custom maps on your pages. Most companies use Third-party APIs on a daily bases since they provide a vast array of functionalities and services that can enhance the capabilities of their applications. For example, Medium uses Google’s OAuth authentication to register and authenticate users by simply clicking on their Gmail accounts. This simplifies the whole process of registering/authenticating the user by eliminating the need to fill in user data.
Integrating third-party APIs mimics the real-world scenarios developers face when working on commercial applications. By building applications with API integrations, you show that you have practical experience in working with external services, which is highly desirable for companies since they rely on external APIs for their products or services. Some third-party APIs you should consider integrating into your projects are:-
Google Maps — Utilizing the Google Map APIs to show maps, find the nearest location from a certain point, convert between addresses and geographic coordinates, etc.
Twilio — Using Twilio APIs to send verification code text messages or to make/receive a phone call or any kind of text messaging from your application.
SendGrid — Email communication is the most commonly used type of communication in companies. Integrating SendGrid APIs to send emails from your application can give you real-world experience.
Twitter — NGOs like the UN use Twitter APIS to access tweets and identify counter-misinformation around public health initiatives. Many other organizations also use Twitter APIs to access tweets, create and manage ad campaigns, embed Twitter timelines, share buttons, and other Twitter content on webpages, and to create chatbot-powered conversational experiences to communicate directly with customers for customer service.
OAuth authentication — If you don’t know yet how to implement OAuth authentication, building projects that integrate OAuth authentications such as Google, Facebook or Microsoft can enhance your experience.
GitHub — You can use the GitHub REST APIs to build Apps that run powerful checks against code changes in a repository, perform continuous integration, code linting, or code scanning services, and provide detailed feedback on commits.
2. Applications with Real-Time functionality
Real-Time Applications are applications that operate within an immediate time frame; sensing, analyzing, and acting on streaming data as it happens. These applications are vital in industries where operating within a specific time constraint can mean life or death; such as identifying and repairing a gas leak at an oil refinery or locating a lost child at a public park.
Real-time data streaming applications have the potential to revolutionize user experiences. From live updates in social media platforms to real-time tracking in logistics applications, the ability to deliver timely and relevant information to users is paramount thus the demand for real-time data streaming applications is rapidly increasing across various industries. Companies rely on real-time insights to make informed decisions, optimize operations, improve customer experiences, and gain a competitive edge. By demonstrating your ability to build applications with real-time data streaming, you can position yourself as a valuable asset in today’s data-driven job market.
As we marked building real-time applications is a powerful way to boost your job prospects, now it is time to discuss what kind of application you can build using Real-time data streaming.
Chat applications — Instant messaging applications can be a good start to show off your skill in utilizing Real-Time libraries such as Socket.IO, and Web Socket.
Social media analytics — You can combine your skill in API Integration and Real-Time data streaming to build a Real-Time Twitter ads dashboard that analyzes and shows reach, likes, engagement, demography, etc in real-time.
Real-Time Geolocation — Using Google Map APIs to track the current location of a person, vehicle, or object at any moment in time.
Video conferencing — An application that has a live video-based meeting between two or more people.
Online gaming — If you are into gaming, this can be a great opportunity to build simple online games that updates the visual of the game, score, and user data in real time.
Any Project that sends, analyzes, and updates data in real time.
3. Microservices and serverless applications
- Definitions
Microservices — also known as microservice architecture — is an architectural style that structures an application as a collection of services that are Independently deployable, loosely coupled, organized around business capabilities, and owned by a small team. The microservice architecture enables an organization to deliver large, complex applications rapidly, frequently, reliably, and sustainably — a necessity for competing and winning in today’s world.
Serverless architecture is a way to build and run applications and services without having to manage infrastructure where you no longer have to provision, scale, and maintain servers to run your applications, databases, and storage systems.
- How it benefits you in your job hunting?
Microservices and serverless architectures empower applications to scale dynamically in response to varying workloads. Microservices, with their modular and independent nature, allow teams to scale individual services independently, optimizing resource usage and ensuring efficient system performance. Serverless computing further enhances scalability by automatically scaling resources based on demand, eliminating the need for manual provisioning. Building microservices and serverless applications presents numerous advantages, including scalability, cost efficiency, rapid development, fault isolation, easy integration, and industry relevance. These benefits make professionals proficient in microservices and serverless architectures highly sought after in today’s job market. By showcasing your expertise in these areas, you position yourself as a competitive candidate, capable of driving innovation and delivering scalable and resilient applications.
- These are a few of the companies that use microservices or serverless architecture:-
Amazon: As a pioneer in cloud computing, Amazon has extensively adopted microservices and serverless architectures. Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers a wide range of serverless services, such as AWS Lambda, which enables developers to build serverless applications. Amazon’s e-commerce platform is built using microservices, allowing different teams to independently develop and deploy services that collectively power the platform.
Netflix: Netflix is renowned for its microservices architecture, which enables the streaming giant to handle high volumes of traffic and deliver personalized user experiences. Netflix leverages microservices to provide various functionalities, including user authentication, recommendation systems, content delivery, and analytics.
Uber: Uber relies heavily on microservices and serverless computing to power its ride-hailing platform. The architecture allows Uber to scale dynamically, handle millions of requests per day, and provide real-time data updates to drivers and passengers. The company utilizes serverless technologies, such as AWS Lambda, for certain backend functionalities.
Airbnb: Airbnb has adopted a microservices architecture to handle the complexity of its online marketplace platform. Microservices enable Airbnb to scale different parts of the platform independently, such as booking, search, messaging, and payments. This architecture allows for rapid development, fault isolation, and seamless integration of new features.
Spotify: Spotify, the popular music streaming service, utilizes microservices to deliver personalized music recommendations and seamless audio streaming experiences. Microservices enable Spotify to handle a vast catalog of songs, deliver real-time updates, and provide a smooth user experience across multiple platforms.
PayPal: PayPal, the online payment system, has embraced microservices to enhance its platform’s performance, scalability, and reliability. Microservices enable PayPal to process millions of transactions securely while providing developers with the flexibility to iterate and innovate independently.
The New York Times: The New York Times adopted microservices to streamline its digital publishing operations. Microservices enable the organization to manage content, handle subscriptions, deliver personalized news recommendations, and optimize its digital platform.
4. Multimedia processing and analytics
In the age of information, Individuals and organizations across industries are inundated with vast amounts of data, audio, video, and documents. To navigate this sea of information and extract valuable insights, companies are increasingly relying on advanced processing and analytics applications.
You can give the impression of advancing and standing out by going out of your way to learn and practice processing multimedia content, including audio, video, and documents. Which will also increase your attractiveness in the media, entertainment, marketing, and e-learning industries. Some ideas to build a Multimedia application can be converting pdf to images, generating a summary from large documents, video cutter, and image/audio/video editing such as cropping, adding texts, controlling the speed, adding effects, and so on.
5. Applications that make use of AI
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a transformative technology with the potential to revolutionize industries across the globe. As organizations increasingly recognize the value of AI, professionals who possess the skills to build applications leveraging AI are in high demand.
In the era of big data, organizations face the challenge of extracting meaningful insights from vast amounts of information. Building AI applications allows businesses to leverage advanced algorithms and models to analyze data, identify patterns, and make data-driven decisions. Demonstrating your ability to build AI applications showcases your proficiency in machine learning, data mining, and predictive analytics, making you an attractive candidate for positions requiring expertise in data-driven decision-making. These can be a good start if you are interested in making AI applications:-
Summary Generator Extensions:- These can be a web app or a browser extension that will generate a summary from websites.
An image classifier:- This application can recognize and organize random images into directories and subdirectories. The application identifies the objects, places, animals, or people in the image and creates a directory with a name like cats, places, and electronics, and puts the images in the directory accordingly.
Personalized Movie Recommendation System:- Build a web application that leverages AI techniques to provide personalized movie recommendations to users. The app can collect user preferences and historical data, analyze movie attributes such as genre, director, and actors, and employ machine learning algorithms to generate tailored movie recommendations.
Chatbot Assistant:- Develop a web-based chatbot assistant that uses AI-powered natural language understanding and processing to interact with users and provide information or assistance. The chatbot can handle frequently asked questions, guide users through specific tasks or processes, and offer personalized recommendations based on user input and preferences.
Join the 6.8k community on Facebook or follow up on linked in to get the advanced node js course I will release soon. It includes:-
Making the most out of nodejs event loop, thread pool, worker_threads and libuv.
Having a software architecture mindset and Writing clean code like a pro as a node js developer
Security first development approach and protecting your node js app
Best practices in developing software that supports millions of users and deploying it
Adopting serverless and microservice architecture in node js and Preparing for node js interviews
Thanks and Happy coding ✌️