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Teach Yourself a New Programming Language in 21 Minutes (Or 2-3 Years)

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Re: Teach Yourself a New Programming Language in 21 Minutes (Or 2-3 Years)

#2

Post by ghc » 

    But this strategy is especially awful if you know you
    don’t plan to ever actually learn the language, but you
    turn out to be wrong. It ends up that you find yourself
    using it on a regular basis, and hilariously, you don’t
    even notice this for years and years.
This is especially true of my relationship with Javascript. First I held it at arm's length, then I learned a bit when jQuery and other frameworks were first released...at least enough to get by. Then, about 3 years later, CoffeeScript came out and I embraced that. Now I find myself, thanks to AngularJS, back at Javascript, and truly embracing the language for the first time.

Javascript will never be my favorite language, but after 10 years of finding every way to avoid using it directly, and 2 repentant years of truly mastering it, I can at least finally say that I know it well.

Re: Teach Yourself a New Programming Language in 21 Minutes (Or 2-3 Years)

#3

Post by Radle »

I feel like understanding the author really when thinking about my first contact to "foreach" in C#.

to me foreach

1) had a totally different syntax then the rest of the language (It felt painful as if somebody mixed up German Gamma with English words --- http://forum.werder.de/showthread.php?4107-My-lovely-mister-... )

2) seemed to have no use (I did not yet make any magic with Arrays...)

3) was difficult to read

4) nothing I would understand (back then)

so I closed my eyes for it...

Nowadays I believe it is a must have, whenever you are doing magic with an array. And for me it became a very powerful tool.

Re: Teach Yourself a New Programming Language in 21 Minutes (Or 2-3 Years)

#5

Post by coolsunglasses »

chrismorgan wrote: post #4

> Python’s primitives aren’t actually objects. As an expert Python programmer, I don't understand what is meant by this.

Might mean __dict__, but it's a silly point to make since underneath that and the rest is *PyObject.

Re: Teach Yourself a New Programming Language in 21 Minutes (Or 2-3 Years)

#6

Post by janeglendale »

This process is much easier if you're working with a "mentor". If there's someone there who knows the language already and can do code reviews, it's a much more realistic option.

Without a safety net, it's so easy to make horrible mistakes without noticing.

Re: Teach Yourself a New Programming Language in 21 Minutes (Or 2-3 Years)

#7

Post by ocfx »

ghc wrote: post #2

But this strategy is especially awful if you know you don’t plan to ever actually learn the language, but you turn out to be wrong. It ends up that you find yourself using it on a regular basis, and hilariously, you don’t even notice this for years and years. This is especially true of my relationship with Javascript. First I held it at arm's length, then I learned a bit when jQuery and other frameworks were first re…

Could you explain some of the reasons for needing a client side framework for a web app? I've always just used requirejs and wrote modules and that has worked for me as I try to keep as much server side as possible, but I realize my experience in the industry is limited so I wanted to hear some arguments for client side frameworks. I've been flamed in a few freenode channels just for bringing them up.

Re: Teach Yourself a New Programming Language in 21 Minutes (Or 2-3 Years)

#8

Post by stiff »

What helps immensely in learning new programming languages quickly, but also in spotting tricky bugs and increasing general software engineering skills is studying programming languages as a discipline of CS: learning how languages are implemented, what are the core paradigms, what are the design choices invented so far for common issues etc. There is a fantastic book called "Programming Language Pragmatics" that is readable and very good in teaching the practical aspects of this:

http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Language-Pragmatics-Third-...

Re: Teach Yourself a New Programming Language in 21 Minutes (Or 2-3 Years)

#9

Post by jaxytee »

ocfx wrote: post #7
ghc wrote: post #2

But this strategy is especially awful if you know you don’t plan to ever actually learn the language, but you turn out to be wrong. It ends up that you find yourself using it on a regular basis, and hilariously, you don’t even notice this for years and years. This is especially true of my relationship with Javascript. First I held it at arm's length, then I learned a bit when jQuery and other frameworks were first re…

Could you explain some of the reasons for needing a client side framework for a web app? I've always just used requirejs and wrote modules and that has worked for me as I try to keep as much server side as possible, but I realize my experience in the industry is limited so I wanted to hear some arguments for client side frameworks. I've been flamed in a few freenode channels just for bringing them up.

The Mode View * client side frameworks help to separate concerns of storing the data relevant to your app (models), creating the abstractions responsible for displaying the models to the user interface (Views), and managing the routing of your app (* or sometimes called controllers) within your application. These separations help to make code in your application more reusable, easier to debug, and easier to modify.
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