35 Passion Project Ideas that Involve Coding – 2024
November 15, 2024
Are you an up-and-coming programmer who wants to build something that you will really care about? Do you want to develop a “passion project,” without really being sure what you’re passionate about? That’s okay! There are some simple steps you can take to start to figure out what you really care about. And if you can’t figure it out on your own, use one of our 35 passion project coding ideas for college and high school students below to get you started. It might just lead you in a whole new direction!
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How to Figure Out What Matters to You
What’s your passion? Ugh, that’s such a hard question. It makes me feel the same way I feel when someone asks me what my favorite book is. My brain goes completely blank; it’s like I’ve never read a book before in my life.
Maybe you’re struggling with something similar. You have an assignment to code a passion project or you just want to create something for yourself that will help to keep your interest. But your mind is going blank! What could you possibly even care about? There must be something, but you just don’t know what it is.
Well, let me help you.
Here are some very straightforward steps to help you get in touch with your values and what kind of ideas could ignite your passions.
Steps for Naming your Passions
1) Start by reflecting on your identity. This is your passion, isn’t it? So, you’ve got to be at the center of it.
- Take out a piece of paper and write down the following categories: Name, age, birthplace, current home, gender, race, ethnicity, religious beliefs, political beliefs, socio-economic status (social class), education level, family and community roles that you hold, and any specific abilities or disabilities that you have.
- These are all important facets that make up the person that you are. Is there anything in there that makes you step back and say, “Wait, that’s really important to me.”
- For example, if you come from a working class background, maybe raising the national minimum wage is important to you. Or, if you’re the first person in your family to go to college, maybe you feel strongly about access to education.
- These things can also flow in the other direction. Maybe you’re the captain of your school soccer team. Is it important to you that all kids get the chance to play sports? Have you seen the positive benefits that exercise has had on your life? Maybe those are the things you’re passionate about. Keep digging!
2) Spend some time absorbing information in the world outside of yourself. You’ve already spent time looking inward, but examining the context in which you live is just as important for figuring out your values and what matters to you. How can you do this?
- Without any objective except just to learn, spend a week reading local newspapers in your community. You can learn what these are by asking for them at your local library—where you can also read them for free. Notice what issues are affecting your community. Does the foodbank need more donations for winter? Are local business owners trying to bring in more foot traffic? Figure out the needs of the people in your world—and you might find something you really care about.
- Spend a little bit of time checking out the national news, as well. What are the big hot button issues that affect your life and your identity (based on what you wrote about for #1)? Is there a cause that your coding skills could benefit?
- Talk to friends, family members, neighbors, and teachers about the issues they see in the world around them. Try your best not to take a side when you’re conducting these conversations—in other words, don’t make it a debate.. Think of them as simply informative interviews. You want to hear what’s affecting others so that you can think about what might be important to you. When something someone says strikes you as important, you’ll know. Follow up with them to learn more—or just start doing research to figure out the important parts of the problem you’re facing.
3) Consider your values.
- What matters to you? Family? Safe spaces for kids to play? Literacy? Music? Theater? Cleanliness? Neurodivergence? Access to information? Make a list of the values that you hold in your life, and think about what they mean to you. Write that out, too: why is this value important to me?
- Take a moment to literally hold the list at arm’s length. Look at all the things that you wrote. Which one or two stand out to you the most?
- Then, using some of the contextual research you did for #2 above—or by conducting even more research by talking to teachers, librarians, or by doing more research. You might check out allsides.com to see how different issues are being covered in the media. What are the big questions and issues at play? Could you contribute positively in some way?
35 Coding Passion Projects for You
If you still need help brainstorming after taking the steps above, here are 35 different passion projects ideas that might help you get started on your own.
Arts-related projects
1) Build a playlist compiler
Take suggestions of a user’s favorite songs (or skim their Spotify or YouTube data) to build a playlist of recommended songs they’ve never listened to before.
2) Create an upcoming show reminder
Build an alert system that reminds users of when their favorite bands or acts are coming to perform within a specific radius. Add suggestions of similar shows they might like.
3) Ticket “scalper”
Write a code that searches popular ticket-selling websites for the lowest prices available.
Passion Project Ideas Coding – College & High School Students
4) Theater Manager
Build a system that automates the lights and sounds for your school’s next play.
5) Creative writing prompt machine
Create the code for a small printer that randomly generates creative writing prompts.
6) Book or movie recommendation machine
Take user input and turn it into a list of book recommendations in the same genre. Do the same thing with movies!
Passion Project Ideas Coding – College & High School Students
7) Book or movie tracker
Like tracking the books you’ve read, but don’t like sharing it with the whole word on Goodreads? Build a tracker that lets you create your own reviews and ratings for books you’ve read, movies you’ve seen, albums you’ve listened to—or all of the above.
Sports-related projects
8) Local stat tracker
Create a site that allows users to see local statistics for sports you love from the high schools or colleges in your district.
9) Intramural/pick-up sports league app
Build an app that allows users to search for intramural/pick-up leagues for different sports. Let users report data like when the basketball or tennis courts are in use, so you don’t waste time going if there’s no space to play.
Passion Project Ideas Coding – College & High School Students
10) Fitness tracker
Build a data organizer that lets users keep track of their daily steps, workouts, weights lifted, miles run, changes in weight, etc., to build a whole-health portfolio.
11) Hike tracker
Find maps for the local trails in your area and compile them in an app that shows users where to park and how to access trailheads.
Volunteering projects
12) Trail clean-up organizer
Speaking of hiking, build an app that organizes the needs and events for local trail organizations, and connect volunteers with event dates.
13) Foodbank Supplier
Contact your local foodbank and build a website that helps the foodbank report things they most need at the moment—and things they need to have used up. Share the site or app with local newspapers and TV stations who can remind people to use the site and make their donations count.
14) Digital Pen Pals
Build an app that connects people who want to find digital pen pals. Sort them by age, interest, and desired mode of connection. People could find one another on the app—and write physical letters back and forth!
Passion Project Ideas Coding – College & High School Students
15) Senior Center Needs
Contact your local senior center and find out when they need volunteers to interact with clients. Automate a system that reminds volunteers of upcoming volunteer opportunities.
16) Thifting/clothing swap app
Instead of using Poshmark, help friends and folks in your community swap clothes for free.
17) Buy Nothing app
Rather than just limiting yourself to clothes, one-up Facebook and create a place for your community to host its Buy Nothing groups. That way, people can swap common household items and other goods for free.
18) Little Free Library Card Catalog
Ok, part of the fun of Little Free Libraries is the serendipity of finding them and figuring out what’s there. But, you could also build a reporting site that lets people self-report what’s in their LFLs—and users to report what books they’ve left behind and in which locations. The project could include a map that shows where the LFLs are in your neighborhood, and which books are available.
19) Water quality reporting system
Put your science knowledge to work and build a water quality sensor system that tests and tracks specific elements in the water coming out of your tap.
Day-to-day projects
20) Roommate Chore Reminder
Create a reminder system that helps keep roommates on track when it’s their turn to take out the trash, do the dishes, or clean the bathroom.
21) Laundry reminder
Use sensors connected to an app that pings you when you forgot to take your laundry out of the dryer.
22) Habit tracker
Bite your nails? Drinking too much coffee? Need to get those 10,000 steps in? Keep track of a specific singular habit over a period of time. Collect data, make inferences, create changes.
Passion Project Ideas Coding – College & High School Students
23) Birthday reminder
Create a database of friend and family birthdays and get reminders ahead of time for when you need to buy a gift.
24) Build a game
Chess? Checkers? Mancala? Build your own gaming interface and let yourself unwind.
25) Slow-rise alarm clock
Build an alarm clock that slowly wakes you up with gradually increasing lights or music.
Passion Project Ideas Coding – College & High School Students
26) Medication reminder
Need to take meds or supplements every day? Create a reminder system that pings you at the same time, every day. It could even be location based so that you get a reminder to check if you took your meds as soon as you leave the house.
27) What to wear?
Create a closet organizer where users can log their individual items, create outfits, and swap look ideas with friends.
Wild card projects
28) Daily or weekly horoscope reader
Get the day’s or week’s vibes by automating a horoscope reader that comes straight to your phone.
29) Tarot card reader
Create a game-like interface that lets users conduct their own tarot card readings in the digital space
Passion Project Ideas Coding – College & High School Students
30) I Ching coin reader
Same thing at the tarot card reader, but with an I Ching coin toss instead!
31) Religious festival tracker
Do you belong to a specific religious faith? Create a reminder system for all the upcoming religious holidays and share it out with your faith community.
School-related projects
32) Tutoring App
Build an app for your school where people can sign up to be tutors and can access help with certain subjects.
33) Study Buddy App
Create the chance for people who don’t need tutors to find study buddies who want to do homework or cram for tests at the same time.
Passion Project Ideas Coding – College & High School Students
34) Notes Exchange
Build a platform for students to share their notes from class. If you’re sick and miss a day, you can just check in on who’s sharing and what they wrote down.
35) Prom Date Nightmare Avoider
Last but not least, avoid ditching the prom or going alone by building a prom date finder. People can search for matches and find friends to go with who they might have thought were otherwise taken. Not too shabby, eh?
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