/programming-ideas

Programming ideas for beginners

Ideas

Table of Contents:

Mad Libs

Implement the famous game of Mad Libs.

Ask the player for various words, such as:

  • A noun
  • A verb
  • An adjective
  • A place

Then, display a story with their words subsituted into the appropriate places. For example:

Please enter a noun: bicycle
Please enter a verb: dance
Please enter an adjective: green
Please enter another adjective: curvy
...

Your story:

It was a [green], cold November day. I woke up to the [curvy] smell of a
[bicycle] roasting in the oven. Then, I saw my brother [dance] down the
stairs...

Concepts

  • User (keyboard) input
  • Text output
  • String concatenation

Bonus Ideas

  • Respond with a message if the player doesn't type in a word and make them try again.
  • Randomly choose from several stories when the program starts so it's not the same every time.

Pick a Number

Description

The program should pick a random number between 1 and 100. It should then ask the player to guess a number. It tells the player whether the number is too high, too low, or correct. This repeats until the player guesses the right number.

Concepts

  • If statements
  • While loops
  • User (keyboard) input
  • Parsing (string → number)

Bonus Ideas

  • Add a number of lives and display a game over message if the player runs out of lives.
  • Give a message if the player types in something other than a valid number.

Tic-Tac-Toe

Description

Two players can play tic-tac-toe. They can select which squares to play on by entering the index, 1-9, of a grid like this:

1|2|3
-+-+-
4|5|6
-+-+-
7|8|9

Every turn alternates between the players, "X" and "O". When a player gets three in a row, it displays which player won. If all nine squares are filled and no player won, then a "tie game" message is displayed.

Concepts

  • 2-dimensional grids/arrays
  • While loops
  • Algorithms (determine if a player has won the game or not)
  • User (keyboard) input
  • Parsing (string → number)

Bonus Ideas

  • Give a message if the player types in something other than a valid number 1-9.
  • Implement a computer player to play against the human
    • This can be something as simple as choosing a random square that the player hasn't chosen yet.

Hangman

Description

The program chooses a random word from a set of possible words. It tells the player how many letters there are and how many lives the player has. It allows the player to guess one letter at a time.

If the player correctly guesses one of the characters in the word, then every appearance of that character in the word is shown. If the player correctly guesses a letter that does not appear in the word, then a life is lost.

After each guess, a partial solution and the number of lives is displayed.

The partial word is displayed where every guessed character is shown and every unguessed character is replaced by a blank ("_"). For example, if the word is "apple", and the player has guessed 'a', 'e', and 'l', then the word would appear as:

a__le

This is repeated until either the player guess all the characters in the word or until the player runs out of lives.

Concepts

  • While loops
  • If statements
  • Random choices
  • User (keyboard) input
  • Algorithms (does the guess appear in the word, displaying correct partial word)

Bonus Ideas

Display a text drawing of a hangman instead of just the number of lives. One part of the man is drawn for every wrong guess. A full hangman may look like this:

   ____
  |    |
  |    o
  |   /|\
  |    |
  |   / \
 _|_
|   |______
|          |
|__________|

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