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[note: I'll be updating this page as I find new resources, if you know of any, pass them along and I'll add them]

Coding for fun and profit is a presentation that I’m giving people ideas to make coding fun while at the same time challenging them to think and code in new ways to grow as a developer.  The first version of this presentation probably wasn’t that fun, death by keynote (powerpoint).  Next go around I’m going to have this page up and start coding from the beginning and have 100% participation.

Coding for fun, solo:

• Learn a new language every year – This gets mixed reviews in the blog space, learning a new language is tough.  Casual exposure and toy usage won’t get you anywhere close to expert level, or maybe where you might even consider you’ve “learned it”, or maybe even to a point where you can have a more idiomatic style.  This is where teaming up with a friend, mentor or colleague can really help through shared experiences or hopefully tutoring.
• Solve problems (remember word problems in school?  like that, only harder, more fun and requiring a program to solve them)
• Scratch an itch (ugf, apress daily deal, hushchamber.com, urlagg.com )

Coding for fun with others:

• hackfests (Google search for hackfest within last month: http://is.gd/u13u)
• coding dojo (http://codingdojo.org/)
• here’s another way to involve a lot of people in a singular coding activity: http://faithfulgeek.tumblr.com/post/70857749/randori-all-inclusive-user-group-hackfest
• scratch an itch with friends
• towards the end I’ll have some resources to help make this work out if your friends aren’t local.

Coding against others (competitions):

• ALT.NET Boulders (http://www.assembla.com/wiki/show/boulders) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/aaronjensen/sets/72157606134459359/)
• Rails Rumble (http://railsrumble.com/) (http://mykidspartyhq.com)
• ro sham bo (http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~darse/rsbpc.html)
• rrobots (http://rrobots.rubyforge.org/screenshots.html)
• ruby battleship (http://sparring.rubyforge.org/battleship/)

Problem Sites:

• http://rubyquiz.com/
• http://www.splatbang.com/rubyquiz/
• http://rubyquiz.strd6.com/
• http://codekata.pragprog.com/
• http://projecteuler.net/index.php?section=problems
• http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell_Quiz
• http://www.fsharp.it/category/project-euler/
• http://perl.plover.com/qotw/
• http://www.techinterview.org/
• https://prof.ti.bfh.ch/hew1/informatik3/prolog/p-99/
• http://icpcres.ecs.baylor.edu/onlinejudge/index.php?option=com_onlinejudge&Itemid=8&category=1
• http://clojure-euler.wikispaces.com/

End to End Learning:

• http://www.pythonchallenge.com/
• http://rubychallenge.com [from the site] Ruby Challenge is a system of puzzles to learn Ruby the fun way, by solving riddles from different categories – starting from the basics (Strings, Arrays), all the way up to advanced concepts like web stuff, metaprogramming etc. Can you hack your way through the maze of riddles?

Resources:

• http://github.com/
• Meetup.com to find a coding group (http://meetup.com) To a much lesser extent there is Yahoo!’s upcoming but meetup seems to have cornered this space.

Fringe:

These are resources that could lead to some coding nirvana, but ymmv as with everything.

• Open Coffee Club (http://www.opencoffeeclub.org/)  More for entrepeneurs but if you have an itch to scratch or are fresh out of ideas this could be a good place to look.
• Usergroups.  ymmv a lot here, they come in all sizes from “talk at to death by powerpoint” to “laid back geek hackery”
• CodeCamps, BarCamps, *Camps, Unconferences, Regional Conferences.  Even if you don’t do a bunch of coding at the event itself, which you could, hopefully you can meet up with a few like minded hackers and carry on the trend afterwards.

Not Sure:

• http://www.itsamuraischool.com/
• http://www.newcloudapp.com/

Remote Pairing:

Here are some resources that could melt away geographical issues when some of your like minded hacker friends want to get down to business.  This list is just high level to give you some ideas, this might have to move out to it’s own page/post.

• Screen sharing (on the Mac I’ve used TeamViewer and iChat Screen Sharing.  on Windows/*nix I’ve used various VNC servers/clients)
• Communication – some combination of IM and Audio (I’ve used Skype for most of it)
• Others (if you’re screen sharing then text editor etc don’t really matter.  If you’re not then ssh+screen+vim/emacs/etc are pretty popular.  If you’re not there’s SubEthaEdit and some derivative projects)

Bit Bucket:

Any resources that haven’t made this page yet will end up at this tag in my delicious feed

• http://delicious.com/jeffrey.schoolcraft/coding-fun-profit