Ask HN: How to learn a new programming language coming from another? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to learn a new programming language coming from another?

2 pointsxrocket3 comments

The question is kinda self-explanatory. I'm on my way to try to become a career developer and get some context in other languages (for instance, Javascript in general and probably NodeJS), but every tutorial I come with is about learning the basics from scratch.

Considering I'd like to get a side project while learning the new language, how could I possibly be able to boost my knowledge process without going though basic tutorial all over again?

Thanks :)

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You could try to read a github project and look up syntax when you get stuck. But for languages, I just like to suck it up and go through the text version of the basic tutorial extremely fast. Or watch boiled down video tutorials at 2x. Take simple notes to remember syntax differences. It will be boring but over in 2 hours. That’s not much time.

Then you can find new interesting features that weren’t present or similar in languages you used before and take a bit more time to broaden your understanding why they were chosen, and how this creates new constraints, opportunities, or room for errors.

For platforms like node.js the architecture is highly variable and sometimes finding and walking through an example close to your eventual project will be most useful.

Cheers!

I think it is best to start from the basics but you just have to find a "basics" book that is not aimed at beginners. Let's say you come from any OOP language and read up on JavaScript - you might just skip the chapter on Functions because heck - I know what function are. But you would miss out a lot of the interesting aspects of the language. See https://eloquentjavascript.net/05_higher_order.html

I have had to learn nearly a dozen languages in my career. You are on a useful track coupling your study with a side project. I found carefully reading a language manual cover to cover while trying to see how to complete a project was powerful and surprisingly easy. The best manual includes a little example material with the specs. It does depend some on how different the philosophies are. The more different they are the more a tutorial is useful.

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