You may have heard the saying, “once you learn one programming language, every nth language is 1/2^n times as difficult”. Well, that’s only true if you’re learning from a good source.
There are many places to learn how to code in Programming Language X, from YouTube to Khan Academy, to reading the raw documentation. However, the problem that I’ve found with many of these resources is that they talk (or write) a lot, then show you a few relevant lines of code, and repeat the cycle. For those that learn by example, the talking-about-code part can be extremely distracting.
| C | C# |
| clojure | css |
| erlang | Go |
| haskell | Java |
| Ruby | Python |
| Scala | Swift |
Fortunately, the community-driven web resource Learn X in Y Minutes has solved this problem. The site is a gold-mine, boasting tutorials of over twenty-five different programming languages, both new and old. What distinguishes Learn X in Y Minutes from the rest is that each tutorial is written entirely in its respective language. The tutorial for C is written in C. Want to learn Ruby? You can download the tutorial source, written in Ruby.
With this approach, Learn X in Y Minutes cuts through the clutter and gives its learners a point-blank “whirlwind tour” of each programming language. Each tutorial is one huge example — carefully annotated with code comments — an immersive primer into the language. Learn X in Y Minutes takes the concept of “learning by example” to heart more than any other resource, allowing you to learn your second, third, or nth language in a relatively small amount of time.
If you’ve learned a programming language already, and have a good grasp on the fundamental concepts of programming, don’t learn your next language without Learn X in Y Minutes. Even though you may not be a Scala whiz or a Python guru in 10 minutes, you’ll already have taken one giant step in the right direction.
