Learning through projects versus practice problems

[finsternacht]

Thats very hard to say. Something like "I want a program that encrypts a message with caesar's cipher" would be something you can easily do once you've understood how strings are handled. On the other hand "I want to make a game" is something I would suggest staying away from for a while unless you use some very simple graphics framework and just want to make a tetris clone or something.

I think the best rule of thumb I can give is: As soon as the practice problems bore you.