What’s your preferred method of learning a new language?

Question

Possible Duplicates:
How do you start learning a new programming language?
What language(s) have you learned, and how?

When learning a new programming language, what do you do?

Answer 1

I normally try to write some code right at the starting, solve some day to day problems using the language, I use google and sometime SO as help while writing without any prior knowledge. If I find that language as useful, I learn more using some books.

Answer 2

Do something real, tangible, that will give you a sense of the language and its idioms, and study some real apps written in that language. A friend of mine implements Mastermind in every new language he wants to learn. I tend to read apps from codeplex, sourceforge, cpan, wherever there's a community around that language, you should be able to find open-sourced apps that people have written.

Have fun with it!

Answer 3

First download the necessary software and install in your machine. Download the tutorial or go to online tutorial, learn and practice with simple examples.

Answer 4

I hear, I forget
I see, I remember
I do, I understand.

Answer 5

I very rarely set out to learn a language just for the sake of it. Usually I have some project that I want to do in any case and either the new language is the best choice for it, or it's just a good opportunity to learn a new language.

I then pretty much just dive in, starting with some of the easier parts. Read other code to learn things and search the web whenever I get stuck. Have definitely never been a fan of sitting down and working through a book on the language or using books for reference.

Answer 6

If I'm interested in learning the new language, I will get and read through the language specification first, preferably on paper.

This will give me a good overview of the language itself, I understand that this is not the preferred method for a lot of people, but don't underestimate the power of just reading through the basics once and getting a mental image of the languages' structure and possibilities.

The next step would be to apply what I learned and fine tune through doing and understanding what others promote as best practice. There is nothing better than to solve problems in the newlanguage and see that it works (or doesn't at first - you learn more from understanding why something failed than from "abc for dummies" tutorials that lead you though a click-path.)

Answer 7

These days I try and write a fun or educational game for my grandkids. Sometimes they never see the result, but it gives me the motivation to keep going, and provides a good cross section of functionality to cover.

Answer 8

RTFM and if there is none... bash that language for having no docs.

Answer 9

Write 99 Bottles of Beer in that language! :D

Answer 10

I prefer to go through some kind of online tutorial, playing along with a REPL or similar (if the language provides one).

While learning Python, I found that The Python Challenge was a fun way to learn, particularly for discovering useful bits of the standard library. I'm currently trying to learn Clojure, and I've been working through various problems on Programming Praxis for that.

Basically, you need to just start hacking as much as possible. That, in my experience, is the most effective way to learn.