Tasks for learning to program?

Question

Programming

I decided to organize a small programming circle in the lyceum where I teach. First of all, I planned to prepare teams for participation in competitions in sports programming (ACM), respectively, and the program was suitable for this - the basics of programming, data structures and algorithms from simple to complex, and other subtleties of sports programming. But it so happened that most of those who attend classes are not particularly interested in sports programming, they want to write some application programs, some are especially eager when visual programming will begin (for now, we are limited to console programs, since even C / C++ has not been parsed to an acceptable level).
Related to this is the question.What can you advise as applied tasks for novice programmers without special education ?
We work in the C language (I want to switch to C ++ a little later, but they don’t want to fill their heads with the object paradigm ahead of time, they would have to master imperative programming to begin with), in the Visual Studio environment. If necessary, you can install, for example, the Qt environment or virtual machines with Linux. If necessary, I can give some basic knowledge from Computer Science, but their volume is limited by the knowledge of students from mathematics, i.e. development of expert systems is unlikely to succeed.

Answer 1

Let the toys program . Besides, everyone is different. This increases the likelihood that they will not lose interest in programming. In addition, mathematics will be tightened up when they want to do something more interesting.

Answer 2

If you want to study applied things, then it would be better, in my opinion, to go straight to Java or C #.
2D games will certainly be received with enthusiasm, especially after the console - try to collectively write a simple 2D game like some kind of tanks or 2D shooters. It will allow you to work out many aspects, including team development.

Answer 3

Or maybe it makes sense to conduct a survey among the alleged members of the circle? Something like - what kind of program would you like to write and give a list or categories (games, system, business) or what thread is more specific (to-do list, calendar, tanks, etc.). And of course leave the field "something else". Perhaps someone has long cherished a dream about the program ...

Answer 4

I am no longer a lyceum student, but one of the most interesting topics for me in applied programming is games. There must be something wrong with me.