ideas or practise over the summer

[jermaindefoe]

hey peeps

does anyone have any good projects that would be good for me to create so i can practise over the summer? im starting a computer science degree in september and want to ensure my limited skills dont get rusty

so far ive made a few programmes in vb.net like a library system and a calculator. However i would appreciate ideas that dont include database linking :d lol becuase i suck hehehe

thanks peeps

[kevchadders]

Some sort of XML reader/writer project to help get some experience using XML.

[chris128]

Surely if you suck at database linking then thats the thing to practise?

[jermaindefoe]

Surely if you suck at database linking then thats the thing to practise?

no becuasei have a database unit in my degree that i iwill be starting and it would probably be best to be tought the correct way by the teachers?

[Deepak Sakpal]

Create your own notepad.

[chris128]

no becuasei have a database unit in my degree that i iwill be starting and it would probably be best to be tought the correct way by the teachers?

Fair enough

I guess it just depends what you would like to learn then, like others have suggested you could make your own version of something like Notepad which would teach you how to use RegEx querries and things like that. You could also try making an instant messenger program if you wanted to learn about sockets and network communication.
At the end of the day it really depends what you want to learn as there's no one project that is going to teach you all of the basic things in VB.NET. I find quite a good way of learning things is to just read a lot of the questions on this forum and try to help people out. That way you do things that you would never of tried otherwise and in then in the future when you need to do a similar thing yourself you already have an idea of how to go about it.

[kevchadders]

As you will be learning databases in your degree I would still consider including that in your project as it might give you some familiarity when you come to doing it in Uni.

[Link]

Create a HTML editor or something like that. Then you come around alot of things like, FileDialogs, stream write/read, webbrowser, regex, richtextbox, design ?

[stripling]

Create a HTML editor or something like that. Then you come around alot of things like, FileDialogs, stream write/read, webbrowser, regex, richtextbox, design ?

good idea, but you will kill this guy!

[Link]

good idea, but you will kill this guy!

What ?

[ntg]

and want to ensure my limited skills dont get rusty

Depending on how limited your skills are, I'd advise to totally forget about doing actual coding - instead try reading this and/or this and have fun.