I use Conway's Game of Life to practice programming and try out languages.
The inspiration came from participating in one of the Code Retreats, where we implemented Game of Life over and over again, working on TDD practices and writing clean code.
It's a form of code kata – the point is to practice TDD and writing clean code.
It's also an opportunity to get aquainted with new languages and test frameworks.
- Ruby with RSpec and Cucumber - starting off in a familiar language
- Coffeescript with Jasmine and underscore.js