I occasionally see messages like this from aimless, excited programmers:

Hey everyone! I just learned Erlang/Haskell/Python, and now I’m looking for a big project to write in it. If you’ve got ideas, let me know!

or

I love Linux and open source and want to contribute to the community by starting a project. What’s an important program that only runs under Windows that you’d love to have a Linux version of?

The wrong-way-aroundness of these requests always puzzles me. The key criteria is a programing language or an operating system or a software license. There’s nothing about solving a problem or overall usefulness or any relevant connection between the application and the interests of the original poster. Would you trust a music notation program developed by a non-musician? A Photoshop cl