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Spend the weekend here, http://www.pythonchallenge.com...

You'll never look back on Perl.

Made me think of the puzzle website I went through while learning the programing language. Any puzzle lovers out there interested can find it here http://www.pythonchallenge.com/ It can be done with little or no knowledge of the language as long as you don't mind reading the docs.

I'll 3rd that.

Have a look here. http://www.pythonchallenge.com/ I know it's been around forever and a day, but some challenges like this will show him there are practical applications to what he is learning.

Crap, I'm a little late in the game but a lot of the things you mentioned are in the Python Challenge. For example, on challenge has you going through a zip file, parsing filenames and using these to follow a chain. It starts easy and moves on up. Plus, there is a forum on that site with hints.

You don't specify where you live, but several very large corporations will hire highly motivated, well qualified high school students for internships. For example Intel will offer summer internships to high school students local to one of their major US campuses (Portland, OR; Santa Clara, CA; Chandler, AZ; Folsom, CA; etc.) If you are not local to a tech giant, you will have to beat the pavement and beg a smaller employer.

When I was about your age I wrote an animation program in assembly on my Amiga 500 and showed it at my local Amiga User's Group. This got me noticed by several people who mentored me and got me a job. What stood out then and will stand out now is: can you dig through the documentation and figure it out yourself? You'd be amazed how many professionals there are out there who need substantial hand holding on any new technology. Self-learners are worth their weight in $100 bills. You want to be one of those.

Here's a good self-learner exercise: When I wanted to learn python, I went to an irc Python channel and found The Python Challenge. It is a series of puzzles to solve by writing python programs to figure out the clue to get you to the next puzzle/web page. This worked very well because the puzzles were small enough that you get that "Yes! I did it!" rush every few hours. Don't be afraid to go to the forums for spoilers.

I know this is offtopic but does anyone know what happened to the python challenge?

There have been no new levels for a long time.

For those who haven't seen it, the python challenge is a great way to learn python.

As if python itself wasn't fun enough :)

Is there an online version? This seems like the type of thing I'd do on my lunch break or when I need a diversion. Something along the lines of the Python Challenge, would be cool. To me, it seems more natural to do these puzzles in soft form.

Well, it's not C, but the Python Challenge is an excellent multilevel programming riddle. Each level builds upon discoveries from previous levels, and encourages deep exploration of the Python library. I got about 1/3 of the way through before being stumped and running out of time to devote to it, but I bet it'd be super fun with a team working on it.

You might want to look at The Python Challenge - admittedly not C-based, but goes to show to concept works.

Bah, Turing! I had that crap shoved down my throat in high school right when I was getting into C/C++ gaming APIs and GNU/Linux - I hated every second of it.

Watered down Pascal... *shudder*. Everything in the library and environment was so buggy, and there was nothing you could do about it.

I really hope schools start teaching in Python really soon, if they're not already. Now there's a great learning language, and it's (gasp) actually useful in the real world too.

P.S. Check out The Python Challenge if you havn't already. Brilliant puzzle, and a great introduction to Python for programmers IMO.

Let's watch that counter fly...