What to do (well, what I do anyway): 1. Borrow an introductory guide that is targeted at people who've programmed before, and read the first 2-3 chapters. Retu

What to do (well, what I do anyway): 1. Borrow an introductory guide that is targeted at people who've programmed before, and read the first 2-3 chapters. Return it to whoever you borrowed it from. 2. Sit down at computer and start to write code. If you get stuck, visit reference manual, and follow it through until you are un-stuck. 3. (For C/C++ programmers) Assume there is somebody constantly looking over your shoulder at whatever you're doing, and telling you that there's a really simple library call that will do all of whatever you've just done, but in one function call. Then assume this notional person is right, and go and find it. 4. GOTO 2 Do: - Find, learn your way around and generally become quick at using some kind of computer-based reference manual that is full-text-searchable and well-indexed, because you'll end up using this a lot. - Familiarize yourself with relevant code browsing features so that you can quickly visit source code for runtime libraries and (where applicable) VM. Then use it a lot to visit the implementations of things and just generally have a look round. This is handy for various purposes, but I mostly use this to find more things to search for in the documentation. - Ask stuff of people who are familiar with the language or whatever. If they offer you code, put it somewhere where it won't get lost, but don't look at it. - Locate a copy of the language spec, or what passes for one, and figure out how to read it, so that when something perplexing happens you can tell whether it's official that things should be this way. Tastes differ, but I avoid doing all the following, so I might be so bold as to suggest that others should avoid hem too: - Looking at source code other than for runtime library/VM/compiler/etc. - Copying code from other people, including from runtime library - Reusing framework code, wizard code or other such junk - Paying much attention to non-specific advice given on Stack Overflow. (Specific answers to specific, direct questions are fine. General advice... usually ignorable.) This all probably sounds a bit odd, but it seems to have stood me in good stead.