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Learn X in Y minutes

learnxinyminutes.com

161 pointsanonu22 comments

Ah, classic. X in Y minutes is a great resource if you want a concise, simple, brief example of what's cool about a language. It's not enough to actually learn the language from, but it's an excellent place to start.

If you know enough linguistic neighbors of the x you're trying to learn the xiny cheat sheets can actually get you surprisingly dangerous.

Ah, the classic assumption problem perhaps best demonstrated by lua:

"I wrote an hour's worth of code, and then I realized this language is 1-indexed when none of it worked!"

I somewhat like learning languages this way, I rarely forget my own mistakes I have to fix.

I think I like learning this way, but then I remember the time I learned the hard way that Matlab hates when scripts begin with a number, and I question my life choices.

I've used this a ton. It's great if you need to modify some library or project and you don't know the language. In the most extreme example I twice got an interview challenge that was mandatorily in X (despite having previously covered that I didn't know X). One of those times I actually managed to pass the challenge and got an offer. Thanks learnxinyminutes!

OT: XinY is a misnomer, since Y is constant: each of the articles is of fixed length. It would be really cool (more helpful) to have some sort of dynamically resizable guide to a language, where I could adjust its length and detail with a little slider at the top!

this has been shared/posted a hundred times before... nothing new here.

Eh, I can't honestly tell if there has been more X's added since the last time it was posted and I don't feel like putting in the time into the wayback machine to find out.

The source is hosted on GitHub; there's a commit log (for each file and directory): https://github.com/adambard/learnxinyminutes-docs/commits/ma...

There have been. The algorithms/datastructures section is entirely new, and I know the CHICKEN x is new as well.

One may learn any x in y minutes, especially if there is no upper limit on y. So I'd like to see something like "Learn X in Y minutes provided Z constraints". But the moment I talk about constraints (like focused attention, practice, drill etc) then it sort of starts getting lesser and lesser popular.

Reminds me the famous old Euclid's remark - "there is no royal road to geometry".

I really hate it when people talk/write like you. Saying absolutely nothing, but using fancy words and phrasing to seem smart.

He has a point, though the way he said it might be a little too grand. Sometimes I feel that I'd like to learn some topic X for school, in enough depth that I can solve problems that appear on exams, while at other times, I wish I could learn X just enough to be dangerous. For this reason I sometimes wish there is one of resource for each of those situations, or as the previous poster called them "constraints". But then I realize that as you divide them up like this, they just don't get popular enough for the author to put in enough work or maintain quality.

Luckily, for the most part, the MOOC scene brings us one type and the other type exists a lot on youtube etc.

I hope I didn't sound too much like the previous poster, but when I read what he said, I realized that I too had the same thought process!

Sorry if I sounded grand there, that wasn't the intention though. I sincerely think, what I wrote reflects some part of the reality about these things called "learn x in y minutes". I may not doubt their intentions and even grant that some of them have very good intentions. But what worries me is the negative attitude about learning such titles (and some such tutorials/articles) end up promoting.

No doubt, the internet has made many things easier to learn. Myself has been very much a beneficiary of the internet.

Take Erlang [1] from that site for example: The site doesn't say anything about how many minutes should I spend to learn Erlang. How many minutes does the author(s) thinks one should spend to learn Erlang? Not mentioned. Even at best such things can be misleading to many newcomers.

[1] https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/erlang/

eh, I sorta share the sentiment. I really like the format of "Learn X in Y minutes" but I'd love if Y could be anywhere from 5 minutes to one month.

but yeah, big words.

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