ideas for programs?

[akameswaran at gmail.com]

I have always found it easiest to scratch a personal itch when learning
a new language.  One of the first things I wrote was a shopping list
program for my wife.  It was a pretty good way to start learning the
lay of the python libraries - it needed a small object database, a gui
(tk, although I far prefer wx at this point), and I generated HTML
pages for printing out the lists.  Good architecture?  no.  good to
learn the lay of the land yes.  Ask your friends/family - everybody has
one thing they wish the computer would do.  Not only will you learn
python, but you'll help your friends.

As far as employment.  I come from a java background, and that seems
the only language I can pay the bills with:).  Particularly in the US -
paid python jobs are hard to come by.  I have been able to scrape some
side income doing zope/plone development for small businesses in the
area wanting to create a web presence - ok so it's only a little bit of
python and bunch of TAL/DTML.  If you want to make money with python
skills, I would recommend learning a python based web/app server, ie
(Zope, cheetah, twisted) and look for small businesses needing
websites.  They frequently could care less about implementation
choices, and it sounds like you have some experience in that field.