Best way to learn a new language?

[THCi]

Whats the best way that you have all learnt a new language?

I find its good to sit in my room with some tunage on, a thermos of coffee, and a good web guide, or book.

What do you find the best?

[SKILL]

an o'reilly's book, some decent music, and it's always useful to have an idea of what you actually want to do

[bloo_fish]

I Ussaly use a book, and then do bare praticly work on my comp making sure i know everything i can really, i cant seem to learn to good with music on, i get distracted like that, andi just sit there and listne to music insted of reading

[DaBeeeenster]

I think one of the best ways to learn is to look at working code. Download a small application off sourceforge, written in the language you are learning, or get some hold of some training examples.

Books are great, but there's only so much they can tell you. Learning practically is a quicker way to learn IMHO...

[woody]

I need a little project where I can apply the code, before I learn much. it's important to apply whatever you read to a real life situation....

[eldren]

I only ever bother learning a new language when I need it to complete a certain task. And then, I don't bother using books. Find an online guide that'll clue me in as to general variable handling and flow control, the language's documentation on instructions, and away I go. Of course, this is a comparatively poor way of learning languages, but it gets one started quicker. And is cheaper.

[bloo_fish]

Originally posted by DaBeeeenster
I think one of the best ways to learn is to look at working code. Download a small application off sourceforge, written in the language you are learning, or get some hold of some training examples.

Books are great, but there's only so much they can tell you. Learning practically is a quicker way to learn IMHO...

Yea but the only problem with that is that if you just look at the code (well for me anyway) it looks like gibberish, so i pritty much learn what every thing means first in a book and then look at working code to see how it works..

[QueenAdreena]

Originally posted by woody
I need a little project where I can apply the code, before I learn much. it's important to apply whatever you read to a real life situation....

Hit. Nail. Head.

I was trying to learn PHP for months by reading books and such like, never got anywhere. Then one day I wanted to make a blog, couldn't find a decent one on the web I liked for free and so set about making my own. It's taken me about a fortnight so far but I've learnt *loads* more than I ever had from reading books alone.

Think of a project you want to do, pick a language you want to learn and off you go.

[THCi]

Application of the language seems to be the best way forward then, Ill bear that in mind.

Also, I did learn more about Vb when i needed to use it for my college work. So, next time Im trying to set up a site and I need a CMS/Blog/Portal/Sausage/Corrgette/Whatever Ill go down that route.

[Dorza]

ive kind of learned most of the basic html stuff, i found that simply looking at other peoples codes and typeing them out helped me learn. Also Front Page had its usefullness to. just inserts say a table then click on the HTML tab and then type it all out. You must type the stuff out and not copy and paste it because u wont learn anything that way. atm im trying to get into JS, tutorials r a little thin at the mo tho.lol

[Nemeliza]

Plenty of spare time and a book/webguide with decent explenations and examples. Just a matter of looking at it for long enough and not throwing a wobbly when it doesnt work

[QueenAdreena]

Originally posted by Nemeliza
Plenty of spare time and a book/webguide with decent explenations and examples. Just a matter of looking at it for long enough and not throwing a wobbly when it doesnt work

I'll agree with this too. I've spent hours wondering why a page doesn't work before realising I've mis-spelt a variable name or have forgotten a semicolon at the end of a line.

It's *very* frustrating at first, but I'm getting to the point now where I'm not making as many trivial little mistakes.

The most important thing is to *stick at it*

[DaBeeeenster]

I think it's important to get a good development environment running. I'm not a php export, but if you can step-debug php scripts at runtime somehow, that sort of thing is an excellent way to learn the nuts and bolts of a language...

[tonicblue]

Trial and error.
Second thing I wrote in C++ (after a hello world app) was a basic calculator. Saw the code some where for how to use a function and it basicaly took in 2 numbers and added them in the function and returned that value. I simply re-wrote this but to have 4 functions. Add, Subtract, Multiply and Divide. It worked after a bit of tweaking. The only thing that I had apart from that was a basic guid off http://www.planetsourcecode.com that was like a bridge from VB to C++, explained the similarities and differences.
After that app I tried to extend it looking at if statements because they are similar to Java so I could do a basic user name and password varification.
Thats the best way to learn imo. I should really try more stuff. I like coding. Must break away from this Microsoft Visual Basic thing. Its not healthy, well, apart from ASP .