This is good advice, and I would just add four things: First, if you are building a web site you might want to really have in the world, then as a bonus you ha

This is good advice, and I would just add four things: First, if you are building a web site you might want to really have in the world, then as a bonus you have it! (Think portfolio, or a blog that actually belongs to you...) Second, if you do this for more than one language you will have a basis of comparison, and this will be valuable to you in and of itself. It might even be valuable to other people! And maybe a topic for the web site.... Third, if you don't want to deal with the inevitable combination of HTML, CSS and Javascript (and various templates, frameworks, etc) that go into making a real website, then consider making an HTTP API instead. You'll still learn a lot, but it'll be more focused. Finally, you might find you have a particular thing you want to do differently than you see it commonly done. Web sites, web frameworks, and API's are great places to scratch that itch. However, be wary of rabbit holes. I'm currently in the middle of writing the web thing I wanted to have "just so," in its second form in Go, having already built it twice in Perl and once in NodeJS, and I think I'm on the right track right now but at this point who knows. (I've learned a lot of Go this way, but this is not an efficient way to actually create software.)