Once your writting a book on programming is it better to have a user make one big game or 5-7 small games/projects?

I think that making a big project is kind of pointless since it wont ever reach the light of day unless you modify it beyond belief.

The small projects can actually be expanded and be developed into real games. Also they do teach the person proper coding and logic. While the big project does this too it would do it in a better fashion as putting together game mechanics is different than making 1 game mechanic(eg shop keeper, skill tree etc). Anyways whats your opinion on this?