(There is no general programming talk subforum so I decided to post it here, language specific.) So I'm looking forward for a little bit of holidays in the next weeks and I decided that this would be a good opportunity to give programming another shot, beneath laying in the sun and desperately trying to relax.

I don't have a shortage of books or any other material for learning a language or general programming techniques. My main problem was that I never had any idea what to actually do with the freshly aquired skillset .. writing pieces of code that add two randomly generated numbers is nothing but plain boring.

I know of Project Euler, but due to my lack of mathematical understanding I can hardly do more than the third level. I have also been told to let my imagination go wild but, to be honest, I suck at that. So if anybody of a collection of exercises, tasks or ideas for aspiring programmers, even though I have no problem with these things be a little more complicated, because challenges help you learn, they'd be greatly appreciated.

Reddit has a relatively large backlog of Daily Programmer challenges stacked up, you could give them a go.

The best way to learn is to read other people's code, assuming you are already assimilated the basis of the language.
Most of the big projects are based on a library so if you want to contribute you'll need to learn how to use the library.

@NeoTerra That's a good idea. When I had free time I had the same problem as shtols. I wanted to start a project but couldn't think of any ideas but these days I have a lot of fun doing my university assignments.

Also check out some of MIT's open courseware. http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-en...r-science/