In this thread, Kleinma makes a good point about novice programmers biting off more than they can chew as a first project, particular if they're trying to write a complex game or something like that.

So, I thought I'd ask here what your first 'real world', personal, programming project was. By that I mean something outside of academic work or a programming job.

Did it get completed? Did you learn a lot from it? What was it? What did you write it in?

My first such project was, yes, a game, an adventure style text game for the Timex Sinclair. It was a pretty short adventure since I only had 2k of memory to work with. I did learn a good bit from it though.