Ask HN: How do experienced programmers learn new things?

#1

Post by xsoul » Wed, Oct 24, 2012, 3:01 PM UTC

Since I'm a novice, I enjoy novice friendly online education but feel reading hundreds of pages of programming books or documentations daunting. I'm curious how experienced programmers learn new things. Do you ... ?

* Read the docs

* Read programming books (such as those by O'reilly)

* Go through online courses

* Other ways (comment if you like)

Re: Ask HN: How do experienced programmers learn new things?

#2

Post by jfb » Wed, Oct 24, 2012, 3:07 PM UTC

By varying either the tooling (use Lambda Prolog to write web servers!) or the problem domain (get deep into computer vision).

Re: Ask HN: How do experienced programmers learn new things?

#3

Post by peterxy37 » Wed, Oct 24, 2012, 3:08 PM UTC

For me, no fixed patterns. Mostly learn new things by googling. If the topic is completely new, and googling does not work, then starts with some text book. After reading initial few chapters, I again come to the googling mode.

Re: Ask HN: How do experienced programmers learn new things?

#4

Post by gexla » Wed, Oct 24, 2012, 3:11 PM UTC

When are experienced programmers NOT learning new things? Constant learning goes with the trade.

You often don't have the time to read through hundreds of pages of programming books, and I don't have the patience for that anyways. The best way to learn is practice, practice, practice. You practice programming and you practice your "look up" skills for finding new info.

Re: Ask HN: How do experienced programmers learn new things?

#5

Post by poezn » Wed, Oct 24, 2012, 4:06 PM UTC

When you're experienced in anything your advantage is that you can put things in relation quickly, which helps you learn things faster.

For me, I learn most when I create something or put my learning in practice immediately. Whether it's languages (natural or programming) or a certain framework, or paradigm. The key is that by running into problems you see how a piece of technology fits into the big picture.

Re: Ask HN: How do experienced programmers learn new things?

#6

Post by jfaucett » Wed, Oct 24, 2012, 7:26 PM UTC

reading source code is #1, a close #2 is debugging so you understand how the design of the software works.

Re: Ask HN: How do experienced programmers learn new things?

#7

Post by xsoul » Thu, Oct 25, 2012, 1:19 AM UTC

Indeed, Practicing and Googling are essential in learning. I guess books and docs come as references, I once thought they were the first thing to go to. Thanks for the comments.

Re: Ask HN: How do experienced programmers learn new things?

#8

Post by calbear98 » Tue, Oct 30, 2012, 8:15 PM UTC

Build something.

I can never really learn just by reading docs, books, etc.

If you want to learn XYZ programming language, write an app in that language. In order to get that app built, you'll need to learn whatever is necessary to use the language.