Learning a Language

[AskNotGames]

I'm currently teaching myself Javascript through the power of YouTube tutorials, I was just wondering what your giys' preferred method is for learning a new language?

[Script47]

Dive in to it. From tutorials you'll be more likely to copy source code. So I dive in to it and make things then read up on StackOverFlow or the Moz docs.

[Jackolantern]

I like to get at least a small foundation in the language first, maybe from a video series or small book (~200 pages or less). From there it is just experimenting with it. But I do like to at least know of the basics first. In my experience just diving right in can lead to a long, painful period of thrashing around and getting nowhere. Spending a bit of time to learn the basics in a guided way can help make the experimentation much more fruitful.

[kaos78414]

I can't recommend http://www.codecademy.com/ highly enough.

[Chris]

Trial and error.

[Klown]

You can learn a lot about any language by following a few tutorials to get a foundation - from there you can create your own small app or program to try new things. I'm a big believer in books - you can learn almost anything for free from the internet - but paying for a book is a great idea.

I read a book that was about 260 pages called Learning Javascript by Tim Wright, it covers everything you would need to know and explains the whys about each topic very well. After I read the book I started writing my own functions and just fill the gaps in my knowledge with places like indie-resource and stack overflow.

After you have learned a few languages you notice how similar a lot of them are - and from there its just knowing the syntax and what a language is capable of and what its limits are.

Good luck!

Dustin

[Jackolantern]

I am also a believer in books since they typically go much deeper than tutorials. That said, like I mentioned above, the length of the book is important. There are programming books out there that are 800+ pages (I have seen a couple that are almost 2000 pages). These are better as reference books if you still need one for some reason (Stack Overflow is my reference book). If you sat down to read a book like Pro C# and the .NET Platform, which is over 1500 pages, you will never actually get started on doing any actual coding. That problem plagued me for a while. I would create these intricate reading lists for something I wanted to learn, but I would never get anywhere. You're retention level of page after page of new, very technical information is very low. I actually read an older edition of the book linked above cover-to-cover, and I forgot what some entire chapters were about by the end of it.

So if you want to use a book, try to choose something that is ~250 pages or so. Too much less and you likely aren't going into any more depth than a dozen web tutorials or so. Too much longer and you will spend all your time reading instead of coding. But a decently-lengthed book can build a great foundation for beginning a project and further experimenting.

[MikuzA]

I can't recommend http://www.codecademy.com/ highly enough.

Thumbs up for this, I recently had a friend asking me tips on making a more advanced website (HTML/CSS/jQuery/PHP/MySQL) and I just directed him to that and told him to get back to me once he is ready to create stuff/test stuff and then ask if something weird pops up