I read a little about the language to get a feel for what its mainstream use. Objective-C is for iOS programming, Ruby is for Rails and the web, etc. then I t

I read a little about the language to get a feel for what its mainstream use. Objective-C is for iOS programming, Ruby is for Rails and the web, etc. then I think of a little project to write in that language. I then run through a couple of tutorials, bending them to the project that I had in mind. By the time I make good headway on my project, I've got a basic level of familiarity with the language.