What projects did you learn the most from?

I rapidly looked through the other forum categories, and I could find no forum for this kind of general discussions, so I figured that it was probably best suited here. I am sorry if this is the wrong forum :)

Lately I've been learning Java, as my first programing language, by reading and doing quite a bit of programing. However coming up with programs to write which will be good for progressing is somehow difficult. I've mostly been reading books and following examples, but coding pre-coded examples from books isn't all that exciting, so I'm looking for something which could be fun, challenging and a decent learning experience. Thus I am wondering;

What java project did you learn the most from programing when you started? Did you program some cool programs by yourself, or did you just read examples and do what is written in books and possibly your education if you're studying Java :)

Hi, I basically learned java from examples and making cool programs. I started making this program because I was interested in Swing. It was basically a notepad with extra tabs, line numbers etc... but it also could compile code and run it. So basically it is my copy of JGrasp, if you have it. I learned a lot because i kept adding new features which required me to learn more java. Another cool one was conways game of life.