Learning a New Programming Language After 8 Years of Experience
For the past 8 years, programming has been my profession, but it started as a hobby, that I was passionated about. For a few months, maybe years, I started losing my passion for programming.
I miss those times when a concept finally made sense, or when I would work on a problem for hours, but it felt like a minute. The fun of figuring things out was gone. PHP and JavaScript is so comfortable to me that now programming had become a repetitive task. Repeating the same pattern over and over. It feels like I'm in an infinite loop.
I want to bring back the passion I once had. I think I need to go back to the beginning. I need to learn something new. But how could I learn a new language?
They all look the same
I looked at some Python code and it felt awful, my eyes hurted. Then I saw Lua, it looked so simple, so beautiful, and there I went to learn Lua. I learned Lua while attempting to setup Neovim (I spent countless hours trying to setup LSPs). Eventually I felt comfortable with Lua, the language was easy.
But I didn't feel like I was learning. All I did was search "How to do X in Lua?" on Google. Something felt off.
I decided to give Python another chance, and after a while, I realized. Python and Lua are scripting languages. Why learn a new scripting language when I already know PHP and JavaScript?
Learning a new scripting language felt boring, they were very similar, their syntax and functions were very similar as well. And again I was on a loop, repeating the same thing that I already knew. I wasn't learning.
Trying something different
That was when it hit me. I had to try something different. Something that could make me passionate again. After all, programming is a hobby for me, a hobby in which I was slowly losing interest into, a hobby that had become a job.
At times I even considered finding a new hobby, a new passion, a hobby that could make me excited. However, I didn't want a new hobby, I like programming.
I felt I needed something that could activate my brain and make me excited again. PHP and JavaScript was so automatic to me that I didn't have to think anymore. Any problem or project that I had to do I just did it. I didn't have to put any thoughts into it. Even when I had a "brilliant" idea and was excited to execute it, after a few hours the excitement was gone, I was just doing the same thing all over again, nothing new. Just repeating the same code, again and again.
Finding something different
There was a game that I really enjoyed playing when I was a kid, it was called Forsaken World. The servers have been shutdown in Brazil in 2017 and the US/EU servers were shutdown in 2022. The community was left with nothing. The only thing left was private servers.
The game was written in C++. With my knowledge I was able to edit the game source and alter some mechanics. At some point I built my own private server with the help of some good friends.
Changing a few lines of code and making it work wasn't enough. I didn't fully understand what I was changing or what was written in the source files. The source code looked like 5 different projects, each with and it's own folder, each folder compiled into a single binary. It looked like a modular monolith. I couldn't wrap my head on how these binaries communicated with each other.
I wanted to understand C++. Understanding it was challenging. I had finally found a language that could make me passionate again: C++.
How could I learn a new language?
I tried learning a few things here and there by looking up on Google, just like I did with Lua, but that wasn't enough with C++. The codebase was huge, and old—it was written in the C++98 standard. Simply looking up on Google how to do certain things wasn't enough. I wanted to truly understand what I was reading.
I want the same level of understanding that I have with PHP and JavaScript: within a few minutes of reading the source file I wanted to be able to understand and edit it. I don't want to simply edit a code block and hope for the best.
Finding the right learning path
First I searched on the internet the best resource to learn C++. There were several free resources and videos available scattered across many search results. I started watching some tutorials, but soon gave up. Watching videos felt too slow because I already knew how to code.
Eventually, I found a book: "A Tour of C++" by Bjarne Stroustrup. I never read a book to learn something. So I thought why not give it a try? Now I had two challenges: to learn a new programming language, and to read a book. These two were enough to activate my brain and make me excited about what was coming next.
Learning new concepts
In the book there were several things that I wasn't aware of. There was a confusing concept about pointers and references. When I finally grasped it, learning this new concept felt rewarding.
I also learned that we could create our own operators, for example I could write my own implementation of the ++ operator for the TrafficLight class.
TrafficLight& operator++(TrafficLight& t) {
switch (t) {
case TrafficLight::green: return t=TrafficLight::yellow;
case TrafficLight::yellow: return t=TrafficLight::red;
case TrafficLight::red: return t=TrafficLight::green;
}
}
TrafficLight next = ++light; // next becomes TrafficLight::greenSimply mind blowing.
Ok, now what?
After reading the book I was like, ok, now what? I still didn't feel like I fully understood the language. How do I get to a good level of understanding? I need to practice. I didn't know exactly how to practice.
I had the game source to practice. But that was still too difficult. I always heard of LeetCode, but never attempted it. It felt like it would be a good practice.
With tons of while loops and if statements, I was able to solve a few Easy Problems. After submitting my solution, I'd look at other solutions, and oh boy, they were so short! Sure I was missing something! It was a nightmare for me to solve it. Now there was another question: How could I solve LeetCode problems more easily? They felt way too complicated. That's when I discovered DSA.
Discovering DSA
DSA stands for Data Structures and Algorithms, something that one would have learnt at a college course. I skipped college. So that was one more challenge that I can face: Learning DSA.
I saw that one of the topics was "Binary Trees", something that I always had heard of but never looked into. I watched a YouTube video, Binary Tree Algorithms from freeCodeCamp.org by AlvinTheProgrammer. It was interesting, it was a topic about programming that I didn't know of, and that I would probably not pay attention to if I were in a classroom.
This was good practice. I got my first segfault error in C++.
Breaking the loop
Learning a new programming language takes time. I first needed to find my purpose: understanding an old codebase written in C++. To learn C++, I needed a fast and comprehensive introduction, the book "A Tour of C++" gave me just that. And then I need to pratice it.
I'll practice while learning DSA I found this course on Udemy by Scott Barrett, the lessons are well presented, with nice smooth animations, the exercises are fun and challenging to do. After I get bored with it, I'll start a personal project so that I can build something from 0 to 1. Doing that will certainly put me in a good level of understading of the language.
I'm feeling happy and passionate about programming again. Every step of learning C++ and DSA was fun. I got my hobby back!
Here's the first time I solved a problem on my own after learning the Tortoise and the Hare algorithm. Solving this made my day. The happiness from solving this was truly rewarding!
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