Also not OP, but I find the best way to learn a new language is to attempt a project using just the documentation. In my mind, the documentation for the languag

Also not OP, but I find the best way to learn a new language is to attempt a project using just the documentation. In my mind, the documentation for the language should provide methods, paradigms, and patterns required to think in that language (and get the benefits). E.g., Starting as complete noob and following the rules as written by the language itself. This is a different approach from: how do I turn some code I wrote in language X to language Y? Similar to transliterating a spoken language versus learning it from the ground-up. Going from Spanish to Italian, you can kindof get away with word-for-word replacement in the same order and get the gist. You can't really do that with, say, Japanese, where there are far more rules not just of grammar but of register and assembly which are nonexistent in romantic languages. In other words, you might learn some vocabulary, but you'll face a big challenge to learning the language with this approach. Both approaches are completely valid, but you'll get further (farther?) with one than the other. You may also realize you are using the wrong language for the project in the process. For example, when I first started heavily using PERL in the mid-90's, and then switched back to C, I was really frustrated I couldn't operate with strings and regexes so recklessly like I did in PERL, but that's because I was using the wrong language (C) for something that should have stayed in PERL.