The really tough part of picking a new language is learning the idioms. If I handed you a book describing the French grammar and an English to French dictionar

The really tough part of picking a new language is learning the idioms. If I handed you a book describing the French grammar and an English to French dictionary and told you to write some short stories, you might be able to put together something parseable by a Frenchman but you wouldn't be writing French. I don't pretend to have a good answer except reading and modifying other people's code seems to help.