I'm of a generation after you, likely, but I'm in the same boat. I learned python by maintaining an IRC bot, which started out rolling d20s. It then expanded into a 1000+ line monstrosity, which was a mess, but the features taught me many aspects of programming, and let me apply it. The bot has since been rewritten into much, much cleaner code, and is one of a few projects I'm proud of. All thanks to RFC1459.