When learning new languages, by far the best project I've seen is the minimalist task manager. It accepts only command line parameters, and just actions to add,

When learning new languages, by far the best project I've seen is the minimalist task manager. It accepts only command line parameters, and just actions to add, edit, remove and print. But it covers: - control flow - strings - arrays - standard input/output (when adding/editing and printing) - file IO - using modules - reading command line parameters - output formatting - editing and running programs (this is important) All that in very few lines with very simple logic. And then there's the challenge to minimize it. The smallest I have seen is 6 lines of python, less than 270 characters total. To do this you must abuse the language, and it requires a deeper understanding of what's going on behind the curtains. It doesn't take more than a day, and from there you can dive into more abstract concepts with much more fluency.