Best Learning Practices

[pghsteelers]

I was wanting to check in with the programming community and found out what programmers might recommend to help learn a new language.

I can come up with some very general "good practices" such as using the language in writing programs, or on the job training.

But to get more specific, in assuming one was attempting to write programs using their new information, what has been everyones personal tricks/practices of the trade they found useful for learning, remembering a new language?


Thanks in advance

 

[pghsteelers]

No bites?

 

[PPettit]

What helps me the most is looking at other people's scripts.

It seems like every time I turn around, I learn about objects/properties/methods that aren't documented in any of the books I own. I like to take other people's code and then add to it or replace part of it just to see what happens. I'm definitely more of a "learn by doing" person.

It also helps me to have a specific task that I'm trying to accomplish. Writing code just for the sake of writing code does nothing for me. I need to see how what I'm doing applies to my environment instead of some hypothetical situation.

Coming to sites like this is a great way to learn new techniques because everyone seems to have different ways of accomplishing the same tasks.

 

[gwrman]

I agree 100% with PPettit.

I used "book learning with hands-on" to understand the basics (such as what an "array" is, so that i could recognize it when i see it)

Unfortunately, just knowing the book-basics doesnt cut it in todays world.

I really learned most or the more advanced methods when i was taking already complete scripts (find these by the millions online for free) and building my personal website. Through dissecting, merging, splitting different code, I really learned the most.

For example, if you have a general web page, that is just coded in HTML, and you are looking to learn .asp/vbscript, for example, try finding a good .asp script/application, and challenge yourself to integrate it in to the html page without chnaging the look/feel fo the page. This will almost always challence you to change the code/script is some way that will prove a valuable learning experinece.

blah blah im gonna shut up now.

 

[MichaelRed]

Correct you mistakes by understanding the error (as opposed to the whine & complain option to get others to do it for you). Advice and insight from others is fine -but do the work yourself and UNDERSTAND it.




MichaelRed

 

[JadeKnight]

In my opinion, the only way to learn a new language is to force yourselfe to use it.
1) Start by reading a book/guide to get the basics of the language. The material should be easy to read/understand. Personally I think the best ones contains some humour and and can be red in no more than 6-8 hours. Don't code while you read. Focus on the reading, no point trying to memorize syntax etc. The important thing is to remember where you red about something. You should be able go back and find it later.
2) Do not try to understand everything you read, accept the fact that you don't understand everything.
3) Find yourself a nice helpfull community (like this)
4) Do a search for similar cases before you start writing your ovn, study the code but do not copy it. You need to write you're ovn code in the beginning. Get the language into you're fingers. You don't get that by copy/past.
5) Force yourself to use the new language in all situations where it can be used until you master it. In the beginning you will probably spend an absurd amount of time completing the simplest task. Eg, you could probably write a batch file with a filecopy in five seconds. The time you will use to accomplish the same thing in vbscript the first time will probably be hours, if the copy job is complex enough. As the time goes by, you will get more experience and soon you will be in a position where you spend less time creating code in the new language that you would have spent doing it the "old" way.
6) Now you can start copying other peopl's work ...

 

[pghsteelers]

Thanks all for all your input.

 

[infinitelo]

addemdom: keep all your code, for reference. (lots of good comments) i keep a 3 ring binder full of code. best ref book i have.

one thing that sounds like a good idea is the script o matic from ms script developers site. just keep adding to it. it's a script that generates script, if you keep adding to it you could use it as an ide of sorts.



if it is to be it's up to me