February 24, 2008 by
ryan
I'm currently in the process of getting to be more comfortable with Ruby on Rails and really just starting to learn F#. In both cases, simply reading a book or tutorials and following along has not been enough to really get my head around it.
First off, I've decided I have to have a project or something to work against. For RoR, there's a little site I'm working on (more on that some other time) -- For F#, I'm currently working thru the 99 Problems with my brother (you can see our solutions here). When simply reading a book or tutorials you don't generally come accrossed the same kind of road blocks that you would find in a project. I think overcoming the road blocks is what helps me better understand a language.
All that being said, I think it's truly important to read as many books, tutorials and source code as you can. Authors read to become better writers ... as developers we should too (See Justice Gray's blog for more on this). I have this bad habit of thinking in C#/Java/C++; this is pretty much as bad as it would be for me to try and speak Japanese using a English to Japanese dictionary. Seeing how other people code helps me stay away from that.
What are some steps that you take when you start learning a new language?
