Gain experience in programming?

If no ideas, then you can try to participate in some opensores project. Source all in the mind and study and use.

Zavozdushivanie a great thing, you can create and maintain some useful little project. It can also be used for testing of all new technologies and solutions.

Take orders writing some simple utilities that script. And you'll get a real problem, and a small fee will get )

Just here offered projecteuler.net expand assumption: puzzles for sports programming on sites that allow multiple languages without thinking www.spoj.pl/ and code.google.com/codejam/.
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There's another anthology type programming rosettacode.org/wiki/Main_Pagein which you need to write code to perform some actual task in many languages. However, not checked how it is presented Ruby.

Participate in opensource projects. You can make a small functionality (plugin) that doesn't exist, and Polish to a Shine. This gives a superior (which is not given neither the Institute, nor of the book):
You read and analyze someone else's code. Which at this stage of development it is possible to take a sample. You learn to navigate the code of a large project and use real development tools (svn, ide, unit tests).
still useful to read those code lib (library), which will continue to operate (for example, I read the pear in php, I think this pear is in any language). Usually, reading the code, you'll often say "WTF?", Google and find out.

Why do you reject the bike in the form of a blog?
I assure you it is not as easy as it seems, especially when you consider the filter input, the selection based on tags, versions, publications, etc.

To start put Refinery CMS
Then try to write it to your plugin, such as displaying placemarks on the Google map.
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I think it will be a great experience for a beginner.