Hello World Applications

Convention dictates that the first application a developer is exposed to for a language is the classic "Hello World!" application. While this is useful to learn how to display text to a screen or console at runtime, it provides very little value otherwise. It also does not provide an obvious avenue for the developer to build upon the application to finer tune his skills.

When leaning a new language or technology it is useful to play around with it in a serious program. I try to do this for each new technology I come across. Below is a short list of suggested applications to write when you are trying to master a new language or technology. The list is broke into 4 parts. Web applications, Desktop applications, Mobile applications, and Server . 

Web applications

• Blog
• Online Store
• Photo album
• Fantasy League Software

Desktop Applications

• Developer Tools
• Recipe Keeper
• Blog Editor

Mobile Applications

• To do list
• Workout assistant

Server Applications

• Instant Messaging
• Distributed job application (like Seti @ Home, to calculate primes or other mathematical tasks)

Finally, regardless of platform there is always the opportunity to contribute to an open source project. There are many great open source projects out there that need help from programmers just like you and I.