Hey folks,
I'm a budding programmer currently taking CS in school. I'd like to be able to spend some of my free time practising various coding techniques and learning at the same time. My problem is that my imagination seems to be lacking in the area of what to code. All ideas that I do come up with are either beyond my current talent level or they end up being too trivial...

I guess what I am asking is if you guys know of any online resources where I (relative) beginner like me could get some ideas or specs for a program that I can write. I need not be original or anything, like I said, it's just for my own practise.

Preferably the program would be written in C and the excersises would increase in difficulty and length. I dunno if such a resource even exists as I've looked with Google with poor results returned.

A beginner's coding forum would be nice too!

Cheers,
Arker.

If encryption interests you then:

Create a basic substitution program that does :

mr. steve johnson heard about how information technology can increase efficiency and effectiveness of his profession as a lawyer. he decided to automate all the processes in his office. he would like all case files to be stored in a central location where he and his executive assistant have full access.

bpvn,y.l.nuedz,eznd.tpantmeoynde nszcepbtysezny.qdzefewjnqtznszqp.t,.n.ccsqs.zqjntzan.cc.qysl.z.,,necnds,ngpec.,,seznt,ntnft j.pvnnd.na.qsa.anyentoyebty.ntffnyd.ngpeq.,,.,nsznds,neccsq.vnnd.n eofanfsx.ntffnqt,.ncsf.,nyenm.n,yep.anszntnq.zyptfnfeqtysezn d.p.nd.ntzands,n.i.qoysl.nt,,s,ytzyndtl.ncoffntqq.,,v

mr. steve johnson heard about how information technology can increase efficiency and effectiveness of his profession as a lawyer. he decided to automate all the processes in his office. he would like all case files to be stored in a central location where he and his executive assistant have full access.

that encodes and decodes a string.

or to trivial research Radix-64 conversion and create a program that does it.

To test use this string:

Original Binary String: 1111100011010001000100000001000000011011111001101001000100111100000000001100000010010110011101100110 0110100101100011011010100110000000001101001110010010101101001001010001101010000101001001010001010101 0010101000010100100100111110101000010100101101000111001010101010000101000101001000110010100100110011 0101000010111010110011001100100010111100011101000000000000001001010101011101011101101101111001011000 00000000000000000000000000000000

Radix-64 converted string: +NEQEBvmkTwAwJZ2ZpY2pgDTkrSUahSUVSoUk+oUtHKqFFIykzULrMyLx0AAlV123lgAAAAA