[d0m]

From my experience, the coolest thing to do when beginning is to work with a GUI because you really have the feeling to do something great (contrary to print hello in a terminal which is more than useless (from a novice point of view, of course)).

So, my suggestion is to put a small bundle library with a main.py to modify and learn. For instance, that library could only show a simple dialog which you can draw and fun with it.

And the exercice might be more about: - Print the current time in this GUI (which might be useful) - Create a small game (such as guess the number, lower/bigger), - Generate a close-me button that move when you try to aim on it.

Etc.. you get the point: easy and fun exercises.

Finally, there are software which abstract the terminal and merge the editing window with the interpreter. I think this might be way better than saying: try to find the terminal, learn to create a directory, etc.. Why not creating the directory directly from the explorer if the user wants to? More particularly, when you start learning something, everything is new. So it's important to separate the concept of what you should know and what you are supposed to learn. So by this respect, creating a directory shouldn't be part of the same as creating a .py file and writing something in edit for instance.

That's my 2 cents. Good luck and have fun with that :-D

[cdr]

Python For Software Design (nee Think Python) does exactly that with its "TurtleWorld" library, and I think it's a pretty great book.

[zedshaw]

While I admire the desire to immediately get a new programmer productive and into the industry where they can be a useful member of society, what you suggest would be for much later in their learning.

[steveklabnik]

Sounds like you need to check out Ruby and Shoes.

[what]

re: doing something less "useless"

Interesting idea. Each lesson you could learn something and apply it to incrementally build an "interesting" program. In the end you have learned the language and have actually created something.