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Hello to everyone , I am new to the forum and I would like to share with you my thinking. I use Laravel for about 3 months now (simply loved it, combining it with Vue just made the whole thing 2x more exciting) and I want to start creating a portfolio because I am hunting my first web development job. A project idea came to my mind that propably can prove that I can do something "usefull" on real time world.
I am about to create an online food delivery application for example a restaurant , using Laravel and Vue (seperated front end and back end , Vue will be a SPA). I would give much emphasize on code quality and best practices making enough research on the internet and these forums. I choosed that project because I think it can cover many things that could be used on real life projects.
Authentication , websockets for real time ordering , front and back ends communication , a good and clean UI, 3rd party Laravel packages ( Voyager for example). Maybe payment integration (Stripe , Paypal ) and much more.
How do you find this idea as a first portfolio project? I will sure learn a ton by doing this , but you know I want the project to be good for portfolio also because I am really on the way to manage getting my first job and I would prefer not wasting my time. Just need your opinion on that as you have more experience, nothing more.
Thanks for reading my post
A project like the one you have described will most certainly expose you to some of the juiciest parts of Laravel and will be a good learning experience. I would recommend that before you start you find a restaurant that is interested in trialing or perhaps adopting your project when complete.
Personally I would start small and build something that I would use myself rather than trying to build the next big thing on your first go. For example I work with Perl at work and couldn't find a good code linter for vscode so I wrote one to scratch my own itch. It's not pretty, lacks tests but it works pretty well.
Gratuitous plug
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=d9705996.perl-toolbox
If you post you project on github people can also use your product, see your code, etc and you will get exposure to dealing with issues, pull requests, etc.
Many recruiters are now looking at candidates github profiles so an active set of repositories goes a long way.
If you are looking at freelancing I would suggest seeing if you know anyone that is looking for a web developer and offer doing work free of charge/discounted if they agree to provide testimonials, references, etc when your looking for new business.
Word of mouth is an often underrated quality. I would also create you own personal website that you can use to showcase your work, CV, etc.
Lastly, good luck. It's not an easy career but is hugely rewarding when you see your first project go live and succeed
@DALMA - Thanks for your answer sir, actually I want web development job that has relation with web development and preferably Laravel, not something about selling a product or something. The project will be online in my portfolio (proving that I can do a basic deployment) for testing with a link on github.
"Restaurant" is just an example , it could be for everything.
@georlioy I understand that you have cited restaurant as an example only. It's easier to stay on track, remain consistent and build something worthwhile when you will have 'someone' use the code when done. Even if you plan to give you resulting code away you will remain substantially more motivated to have a designated end user.
@DALMA - Alright! I totally agree with that , noted.
@DALMA - I agree completely. Why not approach a couple of local businesses, explain you are trying to build a port folio and wondered if theres any processed within their organization that they feel could be streamlined.
Not in laravel, but I did an app for a print and design company who were exchanging details about jobs via email. Created them a portal where jobs are requested, assigned to designers, image proofs uploaded and notes given, eventually approved and pdfs created and uploaded straight to the print company. This process was then overseen by 1 person and not 3 therefore freeing up 2 employees to work on other tasks.
It's not always the obvious things like selling something that's needs automating, sometimes back end processes within a company can benefit greatly.
Depending on the project you could offer to complete it free of charge providing you are able to retain ownership of the code and are able to sell to others.
Even if they turn it down, do the project, treat it like a real paying customer. Come up with a specification yourself of what's required and get to work. It will be a tremendous learning experience and something to add to your portfolio.
However I also agree with other statements of starting small. Why not creating yourself a project portal where you can log the hours spent working o other projects. You could then eventually use this to bill customers, generate them invoices from there etc.
Best of luck to you.
I would second the suggestion to make something that will actually be used, either by yourself or a specific end user.
Writing code is relatively simple, especially with the wealth of tutorials online nowadays.
Being able to understand a real world problem or business process, distil it down and map it to a software architecture is much much harder.
By creating a fictitious project, you will inadvertently design the problem to fit your solution, when it should be the other way around.
Also, use version control and descriptive commit messages, a VCS history showing how you have handled scope change and refactoring is far more useful to a (good) recruiter than the finished code
@STEVECOVE - I'm just starting with git myself and it's truly an amazing tool even for a single developer like myself.
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