I find it hard to learn programming that way (though for other stuff I use post-its). My approach is first to skim the whole book, making a mental note of inter

I find it hard to learn programming that way (though for other stuff I use post-its). My approach is first to skim the whole book, making a mental note of interesting features or ideas I haven't encountered yet, but not really learning them deeply. Then I take a small project and make sure to use all of those features, even if I have to shoehorn them in a bit just for an excuse to use the feature. I will use a programming book more as a reference. Most of these are throwaway projects and don't really end up as useful code, and I don't do this all in one sitting, maybe over the course of two or three weeks here and there.