Darkhack

I thought I would give some bored programmers something fun to do. If you have any ideas/suggestions feel free to post them! These tasks should be accomplishable in almost any language.

Beginner

- Temperature Converter
Write a program that will convert to/from Fahrenheit, Celcius, and Kelvin. Feel free to add any other temperature scales too. You'll have to find the formulas for the conversions on your own. Afterall, research is part of being a good programmer.

- US to Metric Converter
Similar to the temperature convert except you'll convert from the US system using inches and pounds to metric with meters and grams. Add a bunch of other systems for weight, mass, volume ect. Try using floats/doubles to be more precise.

- Password Generator
Write a program that will ask the user how long the password should be and then generate a random password of that length.

- Backwords Text
User enters a string and you will display that string backwords. Try using this string to test your program... ".thguoht I naht remmargorp retteb a era uoY !enod lleW"

Intermediate

- Text Editor
Write a basic text editor where users can read/write basic .txt files. Can be either command line or GUI, your choice.

- Ping
Write a program that allows the user to enter an IP or URL and check to see if that address is online by sending a ping to it.

- CPU Speed Tester
Have the system do a mathmatical computation like 100! (factorial) and use a timer to see how long it took to run and output the time. To make your application useful on faster systems, run a check to see if the time was under 1/5 of a second to increase the size of the factorial. For example if a fast computer was able to do 100! in under 1/5 of a second, have it do 1000! factorial and report back that time instead. Create your own grading scale based off the times. Try to see if your program can guess how fast the machine is, and report back its guess in Mhz based off the results.

- File Properties
Enter a filepath and your app will be able to report back what type of file it is using both the extension and/or the MIME type. Show file size and if possible when it was created or last edited.

Expert

- Basic HTTP Server
A simple server that will be able to send html files.

- IRC Application
Write your own IRC app!

- System Stats
Try to pull as much information as you can about the users system. Try to find OS, applications installed, user logged in, CPU speed/temp, RAM, Resolution and a bunch of other statistics.

- Web Logger
Create a log file that will log all the websites a user has been to. Should work with all browsers. Don't simply pull log information from history files either, have the program run while the user is actually browsing and pull the info from the network traffic.

- Image Uploader
Here is one you web developers can do. Write a script/app that will upload images to a server and resize them automatically.

- Desktop Slideshow
Think you know your OS? Are you a guru with windows, mac, or linux? See if you can write an application that will turn the desktop background into a slideshow and change every few seconds.