Learning a New Programming Language After 8 Years of Experience (Draft)

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 did it while attempting to setup Neovim (I spent countless hours of trying to setup LSPs). Eventually I felt comfortable with Lua, the language was easy and good to look at. But I didn't feel like I was learning. I thought about giving Python shot again, and then I realized these are all scripting languages. Why learn a new scripiting language? Besides 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. I wasn't really learning something new, everything felt the same. Except, I didn't know how certain functions were called in each individual language. Learning Lua became more of a memory game than a learning experience. I was consistently on Google searching how to do x in Lua, at some point I knew the basic functions and the LSP helped with autocompletes. But again, it didn't feel like learning. I didn't get the thrill of learning something new.

That was when it hit me. I had to try something different. Something that can make me passionate again, afterall programming for me is a hobby, a hobby in which I was slowly losing interest into, a hobby that had became a Job, I even considered finding a new hobby and I didn't want a new hobby. I liked programming. I enjoy the comfort of my home and my computer. But I felt I needed something that could activate my brain. 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 think on how anymore, 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 excitment was gone, I was just doing the same thing all over again, nothing new just repeating the same code, again and again.

I had finally found a language that made me passionate again, C++, yes, C++. There was a game that I really enjoyed playing when I was a kid and the source code was written in C++, with my knowledge I was able to edit the game source and alter some mechanics. But that wasn't enough, because I didn't fully understood what I was changing or what was written in the source files and how those files were communicating with one another. The source files were like 5 different projects each with its own compiled binary to be executed on the server. How do these binaries talk with each other?

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, where I could within a few minutes reading the source file I wanted to be able to understand and edit it, I don't want to simply edit a code and hope for the best.

First I searched on the internet the best reasource to learn C++, there was several free resources and videos available scattered across many search results. I started a few, 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. This was new for me. I never read books to learn. So I thought why not give it a try?

The book "A Tour of C++" was a good choice for me. There was both the challenge to learn a new programming language as well as reading. These two were enough to activate my brain and make me excited about what was comming next. In the book there was several things that I wasn't aware. The most confusing were the pointers and references, eventually I got the hang of it. It was nice to learn a new concept. Then I learned that we could create or own operators, for example I could write my own implementation for the ++ operator.

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::green

Simply mind blowing.

After getting a good grasp of the language I set up myself to practice. I didn't know exactly how to practice, but I always heard of "Binary Trees" and "Leet Code", but I never went far to see what that was about. But after hearing about these terms for so long I decided to give Leet Code a try, I was able to solve a few Easy problems, with toons of while loops and if statements, after submitting my solution, I'd look the other solutions, and oh boy, they were so short! Sure I was missing something, it was a nightmare for me to solve it. Then I started searching on how to solve Leet Code problems more easily because I was stuck, they felt way too complicated, I saw that the recommendation was to learn "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. The video was on JavaScript but it was enough so that I could "translate" it into C++. It was interesting, it was a topic about programming that I didn't know of, and that I would probably not pay attention if I were at a classroom. It was a good practice, I got my first segfault error.

Now I'll continue on learning more about 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. At this point I was finally happy and passionate about programming again. Every step of learning C++ was a 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 happines from solving this was trully rewarding.