Ask HN: How can a CS undergrad gain real-world skills?
I try to build projects in my free time to build up a portfolio. However, I'm always stuck for ideas; a lot of my ideas are either out of my skill (or require a lot of research/expertise), or seem too trivial. I've tried looking for open-source projects to contribute to, but have honestly had a really hard time finding projects that I could benefit.
I've had one quite large project that I managed to get through the family of a friend which involved developing quite a large PHP site with a lot of functionality (I used Laravel & OctoberCMS [http://octobercms.com] as a starting point). My main skills are in PHP/HTML/CSS/JS, C#/VB.NET, python, and a tiny bit of Node.js. My uni teaches Java, and at the moment, I'm trying to learn Rust.
Recently, I've been trying to get small jobs freelancing on sites like http://peopleperhour.com/. While I've received one or two small tasks (integrate an API, fix bugs), I've never received a proper 'project' that I could call my own.
Although I think that I'm more skilled and have a more experience than most other students at my level, I also feel as though it'd be easy to go out of my depth doing freelancing. However, I really want to gain some skills/experience that will make me stand out of the crowd.
Hopefully this is an appropriate Ask HN. I think it could benefit a lot of other students in my position.