general learning methodology
- by momo
just wanted to hear on the different general learning paths people embark on when learning a new language/framework.
the one i currently use, which is how i learned bash and am currently learning python, is:
instant hacking tutorial (very short
tutorial introducing the basic
syntax, variable declaration, loops,
data types, etc. and how they are
generally used)
in depth tutorial with good
programming style and slightly
topic-specific (e.g. Mark Pilgrim's
Dive into Python), important topics
for me personally are regex methods,
file IO, and ways the different data
types are utilized best (i wrote a
very primitive bayesian spam filter
using python's dictionaries to keep
track of word occurrences)
spaced-repition of syntax or short
recipes (i use anki, with questions
like 'create dictionary with filename
and filesize metadata,
human-readable' or simpler ones like
'match 0 - 3 occurences of the letter
M in a string', or 'return/create an
iterator from two sequences')
the use of spaced-repitition has been invaluable, and i credit it with the ease that i can recall/create python algorithms. however, i've recently started looking into django, and i've found that spaced-repitition, at least in my case, doesn't work very well for learning a framework, it works best with short code recipes (either that or i should start looking into more basic django framework tutorials). the problem i'm encountering is that since framework programming is not only algorithms, but actually learning the API, which can be quite complex since you have to learn all the methods, modules, the places where they are stored, and the sequence of which things have to be done.
for ex. in django to start a project that deals with polls (from the django tutorial), one has to create the project, edit the settings.py file, create the polls app, edit the models.py file (which requires knowing the classes that are present in the module models), edit the urls.py file, etc. i found that my spaced-repition method didn't work very well for this type of learning, so i wanted to ask you guys what method(s) you use for learning the different frameworks/APIs.
