Gift Ideas for Developers That You Can Code

The best gifts are ones that are meaningfully personal, hold sentimental value, and are well-suited to the recipient’s needs. But let’s face it: Most of us don’t have the time or budget to DIY an elaborate gift for everyone on our list this holiday season. Why not code something instead?

Coding a bespoke application or program is a fun and easy way to put together a thoughtful and truly useful gift that’s technically “homemade.” Your loved ones will be blown away by your coding skills and touched that you made something just for them. (Who knows? You might inspire someone else to pick up coding, too!) And while you bask in their genuine reactions, keep in mind that working on projects is one of the best ways to improve your coding skills and gain programming experience.

You can whip these last-minute ideas up with some coding knowledge, a computer, and your imagination. To help you get to work on your holiday gifts, here are a few ideas for coded gifts you can build for your friends and family, as well as the courses and paths to take if you want to learn or get a refresh on the concepts.

Digital scrapbook website

Don’t let all of the photos and videos from your epic summer adventure just sit in your phone — make a custom website dedicated to your vacation travels instead. Create animated slideshows, write descriptions of the meals you ate, or include interactive maps to chart where you’ve been. You can send the link to the website to your fellow travelers who want to re-live the fun. They’ll get a kick out of this digital keepsake.

Learn the skills:

Recipe app

Nobody bakes snickerdoodle cookies quite like your aunt. Develop a mobile app that’s a digital cookbook that she can use to organize and edit your family’s recipes. Bonus: You can even make it password protected so there’s no risk of someone stealing her famous cookie recipe.

Learn the skills:

Smart home automation script

Your parents rely on their smart home devices to play their favorite tunes, make grocery lists, and check the weather. Surprise them by creating a custom automation script or program tailored to their routine and preferences. This could involve writing scripts to control devices, set up routines, or even integrate with external APIs to gather data or perform specific actions.

Learn the skills:

Code-generated art

Feeling artsy? If you know HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, try playing around with p5.js, an open-source library for creative coding. There are tons of one-of-a-kind creations that you can dream up with p5.js, like an audio visualization that syncs to your favorite song, interactive animations that can move and transform, or funky image filters.

Learn the skills:

Personalized game

The gamer in your life has beat every game from Zelda Tears of the Kingdom to Elden Ring multiple times. Give them a new challenge to conquer and develop an interactive game that incorporates personalized characters and stories from their own life. You can also take a game that you know they already love and create a parody of it based on their interests.

Learn the skills:

Inside joke chatbot

Your Slack convo with your work bestie is full of inside jokes and niche references that only you two understand. Take your AI skills to the next level and develop a chatbot that mimics your conversational style and niche sense of humor.

Learn the skills:

Long-distance weather dashboard

If you’re in a long-distance relationship or have far-flung family members, consider coding a weather dashboard that’ll fetch weather information for your specific locations and display it on an interface. Even though you’re not physically together, you can feel closer knowing what’s happening in their neck of the woods. There are a handful of weather APIs that you can choose from when building this app, like one from the National Weather Service and OpenWeather.

Learn the skills:

Need more festive ideas for the developers and code enthusiasts in your life? Check out these tech book recommendations, explore these gift suggestions from devs, and read this blog about how to use Raspberry Pi to program holiday lights.