It depends on what you mean by "learning". If I'm just looking to get a program to compile and accomplish a relatively straightforward task, I can "learn" enoug

It depends on what you mean by "learning". If I'm just looking to get a program to compile and accomplish a relatively straightforward task, I can "learn" enough of a language just by Googling "how do to X" in a few hours. For most languages that I've played around with, this is as far as I get. However, the process of really understanding what makes a language unique to the point where I can write idiomatic code without needing much assistance (from Google, an IDE, or otherwise) is a much more significant task, and one that almost inherently feels like it needs to take a while. I don't think you can really get around the fact that it requires time to internalize this knowledge. And it's a process that never really ends, you just hit a point of diminishing returns - but there's always more to learn.