Whenever I wanted to learn a programming language, I sooner or later wanted to write something sensible, not just "stupid" exercise programs. I could barely ever think of anything actually making sense for several reasons

- not wanting to reinvent the wheel
- wanting something I’d actually have a use for
- wanting something I’d be motivated to extend
- not wanting to write hundreds of lines before any results
- etc.

Recently some things came to mind which, for me, are sensible things to solve in a new language if one can’t think of something by oneself, since they fulfill some kind of practical learning purpose and are possibly reusable. They may also lead to new ideas.

- plugin/module architecture
- configuration file parsing, possibly in many different formats
- command line option/argument/command parsing
- graphical configuration dialog