I have a similar approach to learning a new language. The first thing I usually do is implement some sort of self-balancing binary search tree (usually AVL, Spl

I have a similar approach to learning a new language. The first thing I usually do is implement some sort of self-balancing binary search tree (usually AVL, Splay, or Red-Black). It's usually something that I can do in just a few hours in a new language, using just the core language features and maybe a couple of standard library functions. It's also just complex enough to force me to learn some of the language idioms so that the resulting code is sufficiently readable/elegant/small/performant. Once I've done this I'm usually much more comfortable reading other code in the language and navigating the language documentation. From there it's much easier to do things where I want to use external libraries, frameworks, build tools etc.