[cutety]

> type out code

This is, in my opinion, probably the most important step that some may skip when learning out of a book. Sure, if you’re already familiar with the language and are using the book to learn concepts, feel free to skip this step, but when you’re learning a language absolutely type out and run the code alongside as you move through the text.

First you’ll have confirmation that your system is configured correctly and everything is installed.

Second you will make typos/copy things incorrectly, this will allow you to start getting familiar with the languages errors. And since you’ll have the (hopefully) correct code to compare to, you can easily find out what caused that error. I like to try to debug without looking back at the text first, but if I can’t figure out in 2-3 tries, I look.

Most importantly, by typing in and running everything, through the sheer amount of repetition you’ll start building up “muscle memory” for the general syntax patterns/idioms/workflow.

I love using books to learn new languages, and is usually the first route I go. I’ve tried learning a few new languages just by reading, then trying to build something, but I find without spending the time actually typing out the examples, when I go to build I constantly have to reference syntax/how to do x, and end up losing any motivation I had.