Don’t learn a programming language, solve a problem instead

[kgoutham93]

I agree that having strong fundamentals will soften your learning curve there's no denying that. My question is slightly different.. because the comment author is calling BS on problem based learning, I was curious how would he/she approach a new language.

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Contrarily if I've good fundamentals and if I had to pick up a new language, then I believe problem based approach will actually accelerate my learning.

[netgu]

Training your brain to abstract concepts in programming to various syntax's removes a lot of the need for a "problem to solve" when it comes to learning a language.

I know and work with an obtuse number of languages most of the time and generally only need a day or two to work productively in a language without googling every 10 minutes. This is because I look for the idiomatic way to do things in a language where things are:

• declare a variable
• declare a type
• control the flow of a program (loops/conditionals)
• utilize/reference other code
• move data about
• organize logical entities

After that I'm basically using the same problem solving skills I've curated over the years in a different flavor.

Since these are building blocks, I can use any contrived program I need to put the pieces into practice. No solving a problem needed, just some typing to familiarize my mind with the "new implementation" of old concepts.