While all that is true, I can't think of any quick toy example that covers all of that. I find that plowing through the first 25 or so PE problems is a great way to get the hang of the basic syntax and style of a language. Once you've gotten the hang of the basic style and syntax you can move on to bigger and more 'real' problems. But starting by trying to build a GUI, call a C library and package your program for distribution before you learn how to create, reverse and iterate of an array seems rather backwards.