How To Master a Programming Language III

Now that you are comfortable working within your desired editor or IDE (Part II) – you can start to focus on learning the programming language syntax.

To learn a programming language you can read a variety of different books or read through online tutorials and how-to’s. Since everyone approaches learning differently, I will leave the decision up to you.

Programming Books

If you learn best by reading a book, I suggest choosing a tutorial book that walks you through learning the language rather than a reference book (at first).

A tutorial books is the better choice because it can be read cover-to-cover and it encourages the reader to work through problems, examples and case studies.

I am a big fan of the Deitel & Deitel books for this reason.

C++ How to Program

Paul J. Deitel and Harvey M. Deitel

Visual C# 2008 How to Program

Paul J. Deitel

Java How to Program

Paul J. Deitel and Harvey M. Deitel

I’ve also mentioned before that I am also recommend the Head First series of books because they teach programming concepts in a practical way without technical jargon.

Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML

Elisabeth Freeman and Eric Freeman

Head First PHP & MySQL

Lynn Beighley and Michael Morrison

You can also find free e-books (in pdf format) that teach programming languages. I recommend How to Think Like a Computer Scientist by Allen B. Downey for learning the Python language.

Programming Tutorials and How-To’s

If you learn better by online tutorial or if you want to supplement your books – there are many websites that offer programming language tutorials.

Again, I recommend finding an online tutorial that walks you through learning the syntax of the language.

List of Tutorials

• Ruby Tutorial (via RubyLearning.com)
• C/C++ Tutorial (via CProgramming.com)
• Free Programming Tutorials (via freeprogrammingresources.com)
• Programming Tutorials (via tutorialguide.net)
• Misc. Tutorials (via ProgrammingTutorials.com)
• Web Building Tutorials (via w3schools.com)

A Grasp of the Language

After you have read through a book or tutorial, you should have a good grasp of the language syntax – but you are far from being a master of the language at this point.

Keep in mind that you don’t need to memorize every little detail about the language, but you should be familiar. You should know how to reference the language API, a useful reference is gotAPI.com which has a comprehensive listing of many programming languages.

If you know of any good tutorial websites or books, please share in the comments.