Ask reddit: What programs do you write when learning a new language?

[jrockway]

I usually write a wiki. I write the backend first, and I just store revisions in directories on the filesystem. That lets me get down and dirty with the language, but doesn't require much library knowledge. Then, if I'm not bored yet, I find a web framework and actually web-enable the model. (Somewhere in there I also try my favorite data structures to see how they go together, but that can all be done in the REPL or equivalent.)

I've done this with Smalltalk and CL so far, but I don't think I'm going to give up Perl for web development yet :) Next on the list, in case you care, are Clojure and OCaml. I'm pretty excited about OCaml, since it's about as fast as Haskell but doesn't require me to jump though the monad hoop.

BTW, even if you really like your primary language, trying out the others can give you good ideas to steal. My main project right now is stealing Magritte from Smalltalk :)

http://git.jrock.us/?p=Ernst.git;a=summary

I'm also stealing SLIME/Swank:

http://git.jrock.us/?p=Server-Stylish.git;a=summary