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Ask HN: How do you learn a new programming language?
I have planned to learn Go, Elixir and probably Rust/C++ too in next 2-3 months. I would like to learn what is your approach? Especially when you already know the basics of a programming language. Do you think of a certain project first and then write code? If yes, how do you get ideas?
Thanks
- davismwfl 8y agoSo personally, I'd never recommend or try to learn that many different languages in the next 2-3 months. Even if you did you would know only a tiny surface of each language and just make yourself dangerous instead of productive. Pick one language and spend a minimum of 3 months, better to spend 6 months to learn the basics and be productive. Honestly, IMO, it takes at least a year of active use to be sufficiently good at a language. My personal method is to find a tutorial on the basics of the language and start there. Doing some basic hello world type projects and then dive deeper and deeper. Afterwards for me I like to take something I have implemented recently and do it in the new language (if appropriate). This lets me understand differences and do a true comparison and find parts of the language I likely didn't fully grasp during the tutorials etc. To be fair too, unless you have active projects where you can utilize the new language, learning one now is not going to stick with you after a year. I personally will learn a language just to learn it, but I also recognize I won't retain a lot of the details unless I am actively using it on real work.
- pknerd 8y agoThanks for a detailed response.