Ask HN: Learning New Programming Languages • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Learning New Programming Languages

#11

Post by squiguy7 » Fri, Aug 29, 2014, 8:27 PM UTC

brudgers wrote: post #10

Martin Ordersky hisself is teaching Functional Programming in Scala starting September 15th: https://www.coursera.org/course/progfun If you don't know C, or Python or Ruby, there's always "The hard way" with Zed Shaw: http://learncodethehardway.org/ October 2, Coursera is abain offering Dan Grossman's Programming Languages , it covers general concepts in programming language design using SML, Racket, and Ruby. https:…

Thanks for the links. I am really interested in functional programming in Rust and Scala as well as some systems level stuff with Go and Rust again. I will check these out.

Re: Ask HN: Learning New Programming Languages

#12

Post by sheepmullet » Sat, Aug 30, 2014, 4:20 AM UTC

I'll go against the grain and suggest you start at the beginning focusing on the simple things.

If you cannot write a simple application in the language without resorting to documentation/google you are not at the level where you can easily learn and apply the more advanced concepts.

Get a good beginners book that contains plenty of exercises to work through. If the language contains mainly familiar concepts then you should be able to complete the book and its exercises within a day or two and feel comfortable using the language.

Re: Ask HN: Learning New Programming Languages

#13

Post by squiguy7 » Tue, Sep 02, 2014, 12:40 AM UTC

sheepmullet wrote: post #12

I'll go against the grain and suggest you start at the beginning focusing on the simple things. If you cannot write a simple application in the language without resorting to documentation/google you are not at the level where you can easily learn and apply the more advanced concepts. Get a good beginners book that contains plenty of exercises to work through. If the language contains mainly familiar concepts then you…

This can sometimes be true. I mostly feel like I get hung up on syntactical differences in a new language and have to double check myself.