[LostInTheWoods2]

I usually implement a tic-tac-toe game as my first project when learning a new language. Tic-tac-toe, properly implemented, will give you a pretty good tour of a language. But with that said, Hello world, still serves it purpose.

[sizzla]

This is a great example of making something that is challenging for a novice, yet not so challenging they give up. The reward is much higher than watching some numbers show up in the correct order and you tend to cover more of the language (2D array or your own abstraction of such, I/O, control flow, etc.).