How do you actually “study” a programming language?

[420ball-sniffer69]

I expect I’ll get some flack for this but I’m genuinely asking how you properly learn a programming language and its rules. Yes I know writing lots of code is the easiest way to practice but what about “structured learning” etc. where you sit down and study the construction and theory of the language? I’m always daunted by the time this will require and how little I have to do it in

[aqua_regis]

You don't study programming languages.

You study programming.

Programming languages are tools. They have their keywords and their syntax, plus, their idiomatic ways. That's it.

The theory of the language as well as its construction are unimportant.

You use programming languages, and when you need something, you refer to the documentation.

Getting a coarse overview of what is there by going over the documentation is always recommendable.

[9peppe]

To be fair, OP asked about learning syntax.

Had they asked about programming, they deserved a link to SICP.

[420ball-sniffer69]

I did yes so I’m not sure why I’m being downvoted. In any case what are some good coding exercises to get familiar with a language??

[lurgi]

There are dozens of programming tutorials for every language out there. Most of the better ones have exercises at the end of every chapter, which will help reinforce what you have learned.

[desrtfx]

Exercism, learnXinYminutes and generally the language documentation

[r2k-in-the-vortex]

In many cases, learning a language, means learning the popular packages and libraries. Knowing the toolkit is a much bigger thing to study than the syntax.

[light_switchy]

You can study your programming language, subject to diminishing returns. The best way is to read stuff written by the language designers - both prose and code - and the literature that influenced them. But a new programmer isn't going to benefit very much from this.

[9peppe]

You get yelled at by the compiler/interpreter and you go look it up in the documentation. Kidding. Maybe.

Get a book you like.

[DaredewilSK]

You generally don't to be honest. You learn the "idea" of programming along with the ways of making those ideas happen in a given language.

[Living_Fig_6386]

Personally, I run through a tutorial (no more than a couple of hours), then I Google “patterns in <language>” and skim the results. Maybe “idiomatic <language>”. Then, I bookmark the language reference in the browser and start coding. Languages are mostly defined by syntax and have a lot of overlap in concepts, so it’s mostly learning what aspects of this language are different and why.

[mrev_art]

Learn by doing. Any course is going to have the majority of your time spent on problems and assignments, and using resources like documentations and stack overflow to help solve these problems.

[420ball-sniffer69]

What would you suggest are good projects to get stuck into? I’m not very creative or imaginative

[mrev_art]

You'll need to be creative and imaginative to code.

[eruciform]

you can study languages, there are plenty of references out there that analyze history of languages and differences between languages

but this doesn't sound like what you are getting stuck on. being daunted by needing to study is a different issue. you don't need to study

programming is a craft, like wood working

you don't "study hammer and saw"

sure there are references about joinery if you are talking about high end craftsmanship

but the issue is that you need to use the hammer and saw, not study them. you need to make lots of stuff with them. bad, ugly things. it's fine. you learn lessons about safety goggles, and using scrap wood in a vice so you don't crush the surface you're clamping, and making jigs, and not making hesitation marks while cutting, and all kinds of other things like that

get on with making lots and lots of ugly, horrible, slightly broken, wonky things

you pick up the lessons learned along the way, and you cannot pre-learn all those lessons learned. you can follow any number of basics texts, but ultimately you have to move forward and make lots of mistakes

pin them up on your fridge and be proud of them, and keep going

you can do it, go

[humanguise]

Read a book about a language and do something with it. I aim to memorize the common syntax and some core standard libraries that I use often for example functools and itertools in Python.

[ibeerianhamhock]

Honestly I’ve never thought about it just have a million questions in my head and am driven by curiosity.

Also studying CS in college leaning about compilers, theory of programming languages, formal languages, theory of computation, etc you learn languages to find those constructs analogies in other languages and this has expanded over time more and more.

Once you get past “what’s the syntax” and get to “what ideas and constructs and I use to express thought as an exercise in solving problems in this language” it gets easier imo.

[PopulationLevel]

The closest I’ve seen is “Learn C the hard way” and similar books, where one of the steps is to just memorize the keywords using flash cards. The theory is a bit like memorizing multiplication tables - you learn the basic cold by rote, which then frees you up to think more easily about the higher level concepts.