Wow! Lots of great suggestions here. I especially liked @fogus' suggestion on maintaining a list of pet projects that you work out in each language. This way, y

Wow! Lots of great suggestions here. I especially liked @fogus' suggestion on maintaining a list of pet projects that you work out in each language. This way, you don't struggle with the domain any more - you just have to fight one learning curve. With that said, I believe there is a term used in swimming, and one that I use to explain how I learn new languages - "Total Immersion". Here's how I do it - open up your favorite reader, and subscribe to a couple of blogs that talk/explore the language that you are playing with. There are usually a few "gurus" that you can follow. Another way to find good people is to put a search for a particular hashtag in twitter. Or join the Google Groups page (if your language has one). Then every day spend an hour or so reading - initially none of it makes any sense (at least no to me anyway :D) - but I have learned that over time my brain latches on to these "snippets" of wisdom, little tricks in the language that you can eventually "grok" as you learn more about that language. It's these "Ah! That's what xyz was talking about" that really make things interesting. Furthermore, you could attempt to partake in the conversation (even if you lurk, like I do). People ask all kinds of questions on google groups or twitter - even if you are not confident enough to respond, you can attempt to find an answer on your own. What this does for me is that sometimes it's a small enough question that you can start to delve into and get a better understanding of one particular aspect of the language. For e.g. recently on the Clojure user Group someone asked "Pretty-print with metadata?" [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/clojure/5LRmPXutah8 https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/clojure/5LRmPXutah8] - I had never thought about it, but it is an interesting problem. So I sat down to see if I could find a way to do it out of the box. No cigar. So then I wrote a small function to make it happen. Needless to say, my solution was no where nearly as elegant as the ones posted in response, but then I got see where I went wrong :) Hope that helps. Good luck.