[arh68]

Sometimes I like to reach for my toes, so to speak. There are times when I try to reach for the stars, stretch myself while reinventing a wheel (maybe write a Fibonacci heap in Python, a hash table in C.. ). There's the other end of the spectrum, though: real simple stuff. Project Euler is okay, but I like simple file i/o. It's more about getting comfortable with your tools than writing algorithmic novelties. Simple puzzles are often good as they exercise parsing + simple data transforms. Stay away from the brain busters, though, for fear of wasting your time.

Here's a real simple one, from a book I cannot recall: I've got a file with names, years-of-birth, and years-of-death; in what year were the most people alive?