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What is best practices reading a new programming language book considering:

  • You are working full time
  • You never used that programming language
  • Your work environment is not using that programming language
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possible duplicate of How do you learn a new programming language? – kevin cline Mar 7 '12 at 19:29
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Why so many votes for close? – Mohsen Mar 7 '12 at 20:21
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Because the question can apply to any profession, not programming alone. – Oded♦ Mar 7 '12 at 20:27
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A 'Programming Language Book' is clearly in programmers profession. I don't know any non-programmer reading a programming book. – Mohsen Mar 7 '12 at 20:31
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@Mohsen: The question could be applied to other professions in the form of "What is the best practice for reading a new $toolOrMethodologyRelatedToProfession book considering: - you are working full time; - you never used that $toolOrMethodologyRelatedToProfession; - Your work environment is not using that $toolOrMethodologyRelatedToProfession" and the answers would probably be very similar. – FrustratedWithFormsDesigner Mar 7 '12 at 21:51
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closed as off topic by A----------------------- -----, kevin cline, Oded♦, Jim G., Bernard Mar 7 '12 at 21:07

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2 Answers

up vote 5 down vote accepted

If you are a morning person:

  1. Get up early.
  2. Read a chapter.
  3. Do the exercises, or
  4. Apply concepts to personal project.

If you are an evening person:

  1. Eat dinner.
  2. Read a chapter.
  3. Do the exercises, or
  4. Apply concepts to personal project.
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up vote 1 down vote

I do something similar to what Matthew Flynn suggests - I have the book (either printed or in e-book form) open, read it, type along, and experiment on my own until I know how to use what I just learned without constantly looking it up.

One thing I do, though, is use a language that my company doesn't officially use, as a rapid prototyping language. I work in a .NET environment at work, and I use a lot of Python/R to do my work before writing a line of C#. I am looking into setting up IronPython and F# to get direct access to the objects/assemblies that my C# environment has.

Facilitates learning, lets me experiment faster.

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Are you on your computer while reading the book? – Mohsen Mar 7 '12 at 20:21
@Mohsen - yes - I used to learn by just reading a programming book, several chapters at a time - but I didn't really absorb knowledge that way, I would tend to forget it as I hadn't used it yet. So instead I have a shell and text editor open (languages like Ruby/Python/Haskell, which have REPLs, make this easier), and type things in, see how they run, see what happens. It's how I learn best, but everyone has to figure out what works for them. – birryree Mar 7 '12 at 20:23

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