Interesting list, I guess it depends on your personal inclinations and circumstances, but if you're looking for ideas, it's a good start. I won't go to far as

Interesting list, I guess it depends on your personal inclinations and circumstances, but if you're looking for ideas, it's a good start. I won't go to far as to tell what every programmer should try, just what were my personal choices. Using the Sinclair ZX Spectrum: - Music staff editor and tracker (very crude) - 2D game - Space Invaders (only one invader) That computer wasn't even mine. With my first computer (386): - Huffman compressor - B-Tree indexes (outperformed DBase/Clipper) - OOP form generator - Several DOS background programs, one of them was later used by a big company for installations Years later: - Email checker for dial-up - Manual parser for syntax highlighting - Spreadsheet (something like that, I'm on it now) Sure I forget someting.