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Discussion on: How do you approach when you are learning new language ?

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Jake Varness

I think the hardest thing when learning a new language is not knowing what to do with the newfound knowledge.

Sometimes I try to implement projects that I've done in the past but by using a different technology. For example, I wanted to learn Angular and TypeScript as well as deploying to Heroku, so I wrote the Tour of Heroes Tutorial and put it out on Github. I want to learn React, so I'm trying to implement the same thing but this time in React.

If you're trying to just get basic language features down, try going to Project Euler and try to implement the solutions to the problems listed on that site, but using the language you want (there are like... hundreds, so you'll be able to keep yourself pretty busy). I started solving problems for fun just so I could learn Go and Dart. I might even try to use other languages to solve those problems too.

The biggest thing for me is to have an end-goal in mind, and not one that's too lofty. Set goals for yourself that don't take more than a day to accomplish, otherwise you might get burned out on spinning your wheels trying to solve problems with your code. Those small victories can amount to a lot over time! Once you get bored with those small victories, start making more lofty goals for yourself like making mobile/cloud deployed apps.