Does anyone here program and learn Japanese at the same time?

Does anyone here program and learn Japanese at the same time? - Printable Version

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Does anyone here program and learn Japanese at the same time? - Xanpakuto - 2014-01-25

I just started to code yesterday, and to my surprise I actually loved it. Loved it so much that it ruined my schedule for learning japanese that day. Right now I'm learning Ruby, I have no experience in coding whatsoever. All I know is that ruby may be a good place to start? Anyway, I'm using this website called codeacadamy, it's working pretty well. Of course I'm even putting the syntax into anki so I don't forget it.

Is anyone here learning a new programming while learning japanese? Also if there's any senior programmers here, and tips :p

Does anyone here program and learn Japanese at the same time? - Bokusenou - 2014-01-25

Yeah, I love using dotinstall.com to do both. XD

Does anyone here program and learn Japanese at the same time? - AlgoRhythmic - 2014-01-25

Xanpakuto Wrote:Of course I'm even putting the syntax into anki so I don't forget it.

I don't know, that sounds like a huge waste of time to me. Just spend that time practicing to write programs instead, then you'll learn both the syntax and gain real experience at the same time.

Does anyone here program and learn Japanese at the same time? - Xanpakuto - 2014-01-25

AlgoRhythmic Wrote:
Xanpakuto Wrote:Of course I'm even putting the syntax into anki so I don't forget it.
I don't know, that sounds like a huge waste of time to me. Just spend that time practicing to write programs instead, then you'll learn both the syntax and gain real experience at the same time.

Thanks for the advice but point me on the right direction please. Like I've said, I've never did any programming in my life. I'm only on codeacademy and I think it's going well? I'd LOVE to make a new program though.

Does anyone here program and learn Japanese at the same time? - gdaxeman - 2014-01-25

Derek Sivers, founder of CD Baby, wrote a post about using Anki to memorize a programming language, and he says:

Quote:"I've been doing this for a year, and it's the most helpful learning technique I've found in 14 years of computer programming. ... it's been a HUGE boost to my fluency. I highly recommend it, as you can tell."

Article: Memorizing a programming language using spaced repetition software

Does anyone here program and learn Japanese at the same time? - AlgoRhythmic - 2014-01-25

gdaxeman Wrote:Derek Sivers, founder of CD Baby, wrote a post about using Anki to memorize a programming language, and he says:

Quote:"I've been doing this for a year, and it's the most helpful learning technique I've found in 14 years of computer programming. ... it's been a HUGE boost to my fluency. I highly recommend it, as you can tell."
Article: Memorizing a programming language using spaced repetition software

Well fair enough, I admit I haven't tried it myself so maybe I spoke a little too quickly there. Still, I get the feeling this would mostly be useful in order to become really syntactically fluent in some specific language, like instantly remembering every important library function and so on, which of course might make a programmer more productive but I'm not sure if this is something you should focus on as a beginner. There are a lot of general programming concepts (basic control flow and statements, data types and data structures, time complexity, memory hierarchies and so on) that are essential, and really just getting experience of writing programs. Then when you got this stuff down and want to become more productive, maybe SRS with syntax might be a good idea I don't know.

This is just my opinion though, I'm sure there are people who disagree.

Does anyone here program and learn Japanese at the same time? - gaiaslastlaugh - 2014-01-25

I work as a Technical Trainer for a large retailer/Web service provider. I've been a software developer, API documentation author ,and Technical Trainer for about 18 years. I cut my teeth on C, C++, and Perl, but have mainly been writing in a mix of C# and PHP for the past four-five years. My new job will likely necessitate picking up Python, which I'm excited about.

I never thought of using Anki to learn a new programming language. I've mainly gone about it by starting with the basics, then coding apps of increasing complexity. I can see the advantages in learning keywords and control statements, but think it'd be harder to use to teach entire programming paradigms (e.g., OOAD, OOP, functional programming).

Does anyone here program and learn Japanese at the same time? - Xanpakuto - 2014-01-25

So I guess I'll keep anki for now. However, I'm just a bit concerned whether or not I should continue learning ruby or just learn C or something.

Does anyone here program and learn Japanese at the same time? - mc962 - 2014-01-25

Do you actually plan on doing something with this programming language or is it more of a for fun type of thing? If it's for a future career path then someone else may want to chime in as I've only done a little bit of Python as a college class, but if you are doing it more for fun/hobby then I would approach it like learning a language (like Japanese).

I'd recommend doing what you find to be enjoyable like what you would do with Japanese. Don't like watching anime to learn like everyone else does? Watch some drama. Don't like watching TV? Learn kanji and read till you drop. I don't have as much experience with programming but I would think it'd be the same. Do what you enjoy and have fun with it. Learn Ruby and have fun with it. I'm not particularly familiar with it but I believe you can do some cool things with the language. After you feel comfortable enough with Ruby then if you really want C you can always move there

Does anyone here program and learn Japanese at the same time? - Xanpakuto - 2014-01-25

mc962 Wrote:Do you actually plan on doing something with this programming language or is it more of a for fun type of thing?

I'm choosing between two majors, computer science and mechanical engineering. Obviously, their different. However, I've always loved anything related to computers and unfortunately I've only started to code now. I have about 5-6 months before classes start so I might as well do as much as I can now. I've only did some research and started on Ruby, than perhaps later I'll move to Javascript or C

Does anyone here program and learn Japanese at the same time? - Aikynaro - 2014-01-26

Pick one language and stick with it until you know it and understand how the logic of programming works. Once you've learnt one language you can pick up most other languages trivially. It's not really the same as learning a natural language at all. I don't know much about Ruby, but it's probably an infinitely less demoralising place to start than C.

Does anyone here program and learn Japanese at the same time? - tokyostyle - 2014-01-26

Learning the syntax of a programming language does not teach you anything about programming itself. It is merely the minimal knowledge necessary to learn the science of modern computer software design.

In order to learn actually program, or the logic of programming as Aikynaro put it above, you'll want a design patterns book. There is a design pattern book for Ruby but Head First Design Patterns is a lot more beginner friendly. (Note: I learned this all far too long ago to have a completely objective opinion on these books although I do have a copy of the Ruby Design Patterns book.)

One thing to note about your choice of major: You can always graduate with a mechanical engineering degree and get a programming job but you can't do the opposite. Also, assuming your university offers it, you might look into a computer engineering degree where you'll learn electrical engineering as well.

Does anyone here program and learn Japanese at the same time? - klaxa - 2014-01-26

I heard Project Euler is a very good place to start learning programming. I haven't participated myself yet, though. I am in my third year of studying computer science and I think everyone will agree that to get better at programming you just have to code stuff. Project Euler helps grasping the concepts of mathematical programming and teaches problem solving skills.
I started programming on a programmable calculator (TI-84+), which had a bad influence on my coding style. I am very fond of python by now and almost exclusively code on python. I do love C though because of its closeness to the hardware. I wouldn't exactly start to learn programming with C though, because it requires the programmer to do much more low-level stuff like memory management than higher programming languages, like python or ruby, do.
To be honest, I have never thought of using Anki to learn programming syntax or library calls. In a video lecture I watched before I entered university, I heard that looking up things is how you learn a programming language. You look things up as many times as you need until you memorized it. I can see the benefit of knowing these things by heart; I spend a lot of my time coding looking up library documentation. I don't think I personally will use Anki to memorize syntax or library calls, though.

Does anyone here program and learn Japanese at the same time? - Stansfield123 - 2014-01-26

I'm sure there are a lot of programmers here. I'm one of them.

I wouldn't bother with drilling syntax. You'll soon learn that syntax is the least of your worries. Besides, Codeacademy, while great for what it is, isn't meant to offer any kind of in depth information that you should be trying to memorize. It's supposed to be a place where beginners can wet their beaks without getting frustrated. Just go over the lessons there once, to get a taste of the language and what some of its capabilities are, and then move on to a beginners' book or tutorial to actually start learning.

In general, the challenge of being a programmer these days, for beginners, is grasping the big picture. Figuring out what to study so that you can actually achieve your goals, and how to connect what you've studied into a finished product. So it's very important that you don't just focus on studying a language. Much like with Japanese, you have to immerse yourself in geekdom, learn by hanging out with others, following their blogs, twitter accounts, message boards, podcasts, vodcasts, etc. I'm sure there are tons of Ruby related ones out there.

Regarding Ruby being a good place to start, I guess it depends on your goals. Sure, Ruby is as good as any other popular language. You're certainly not wasting your time, you can make a very successful career out of being an expert in Ruby. It's very popular in Japan, btw., I've read somewhere that it's the number one programming language there. But it's gonna take a while to reach a point where you can actually be productive coding in it (as in make money). There might be better alternatives, if your goal is to make money as quickly as possible.

Does anyone here program and learn Japanese at the same time? - Stansfield123 - 2014-01-26

Just in case you're interested in something other than Ruby, here's an introductory course on Computer Science, from Harvard Extension School:

http://cs50.tv/2013/fall/

It's free, and you can do it on your own pretty much just as well as if you were there. If you click in the top right corner, you'll find that there are more courses available: A more basic course on computers and the Internet, and a few more specific ones: one on Java, one on web development with HTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP (the E75 one), a couple on mobile web development, etc. ; nothing on Ruby though - maybe you can find one from another college).

You should know that these courses are the real deal: there's a lot of homework, and you have to read all the recommended resources (books, tutorials) to be able to do it. Watching the lectures and seminars is not enough. There are no tests, students pass or fail based on whether they did the projects. So you can evaluate yourself, even if you're not actually there.

Does anyone here program and learn Japanese at the same time? - BlackIce - 2014-01-26

Since I'm an IT student, I study programming too (didn't started learning japanese until about 2nd year in college). Started learning C++ -> C# -> (other) HTML/CSS/PHP -> Assembly (so touughh but it was part of our curriculum -_-) -> Java. I agree with the above poster, syntax should be the lesser priority. Switching from one language to another is not that hard just a different syntax (At first I thought it was hard; I don't know about other languages)

Try solving problems each day with only what you've learned while also working on a new lesson each day. I think most ebooks does this, some of which I used was deitel java how to program and the malik c++ book. Basics to oop concepts to data structures here.

After that, maybe move on to GUIs by making simple app like a calculator. Learning SQL/Oracle for database then design patterns (head first design patterns) & system analysis and design if you want to make a simple system (maybe a local library or app with database of downloaded anime files etc + watched list + etc which I did lol).

There are also a lot of tutorial videos you can get if you are getting tired of books for free(thenewboston, stanford university, derekbanas; all on youtube), free courses online like http://www.csd.uwo.ca/current_students/undergraduate_students/courses.html
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/intro-programming/
or something paid you can get on the net for free; if you know what i mean.

Does anyone here program and learn Japanese at the same time? - Xanpakuto - 2014-01-26

So maybe I should reconsider not using Anki. So if I'm not going to memorize any syntax, what is there to memorize in programming?

Thanks for all the suggestions by the way everyone

Does anyone here program and learn Japanese at the same time? - NightSky - 2014-01-26

I'm a programmer too, and agree with those saying don't use Anki. Especially for learning syntax, its an enormous waste of time.

Besides, even when you are writing code to do anything at all, you will be staring already at the syntax that either you have already written or someone else wrote. Knowing a set of syntax is obviously important to being able to communicate with a computer, but by itself it does not make a good programmer.

Ruby is a perfectly good start - its even more fun on the Linux platform, so go get Ubuntu or something and work on that 8) Python is also nice.

Once you know one language well, you can pick up most others relatively quickly anyway (at least imperative languages, functional languages are a different beast). If you know Ruby then Python will be easy, as would Perl, and then you can start learning C/C++ where things start getting more fun again Smile

Anyway, I'd advise just reading a lot and playing as much as you can. As you get better, try writing different types of things too. Simple console game in the beginning is good, later try and use an API like QT or GTK to start putting windows on the screen. The more exposure you get yourself the easier things will fall into place!

(Which sounds a lot like what you need to do to learn Japanese actually...).

Does anyone here program and learn Japanese at the same time? - AlgoRhythmic - 2014-01-26

Xanpakuto Wrote:So if I'm not going to memorize any syntax, what is there to memorize in programming?

There are lots of things beside syntax that a good programmer needs to know, and the best way to learn this stuff is probably a combination of reading books (Internet works too, I have learned lots of stuff on websites like stackoverflow) and getting practical experience by actually coding. But programming is really more about understanding different concepts than memorizing stuff (although of course you need to memorize stuff to understand stuff so it's not completely unrelated but yeah).

But to mention quickly some of the most essential things:
Basic building blocks like data types, variable assignments, control flow (loops, if-statements), function calls, input/output and so on. The stuff that you need to know to write even the simplest of programs.

Data structures. Understand the difference and preferably implement yourself the most common data structures. Also in order to understand when it's suitable to use each data structure you need to learn time complexity analysis. Time complexity analysis is also very useful in general when deciding what algorithm to use to solve a problem.

Learning about the different memory segments and most importantly perhaps the difference between the stack and heap, and understand which of your data go into the different segments and the different pros and cons. Maybe not as important but learning about memory hierarchies and cache memories in general is useful to write more optimized programs in some cases.

You need to understand how data is represented in the computer in binary form. How are negative numbers represented, why can floating point numbers represent both larger and smaller numbers than integers using the same number of bits, and at what cost? Learning about the basic bit manipulation operations and stuff like that.

You should also eventually study using threads in your programs, which requires you to learn how to write thread-safe programs which requires sharing data between several threads using locks and condition variables.

When you're starting to get more advanced there are lots of other stuff that you should probably learn, for example operating systems and how to use system calls. Learning about optimizing compilers and especially what type of optimizations that are usually done automatically for you is important in order to not perform meaningless "optimizations" which do nothing but make the code less readable.

There's really a shitload of stuff that is pretty much completely unrelated to specific language syntax that you need to learn if you want to become a good programmer. The list above is far from complete.

Does anyone here program and learn Japanese at the same time? - Aikynaro - 2014-01-26

Xanpakuto Wrote:So maybe I should reconsider not using Anki. So if I'm not going to memorize any syntax, what is there to memorize in programming?

Memorise where you can find the documentation for whatever it is you're trying to do.
Or better yet, just bookmark it.

You don't really need to memorise anything. Well, of course you need to remember how to do stuff, but sitting down and specifically memorising it is probably not the best way to do that.

I think the best thing you can do is sit down with a really good tutorial that goes through things step-by-step. I credit Lazy Foo's SDL tutorials with getting me through the 'what the hell am I doing oh god' stage of learning to program (but they're all C++). Online tutorials are, IMO, better than books for learning how to do things in this case. Books are great for explaining some bigger picture stuff, but what you need now is probably more to sit down and copy people who know what they're doing until you understand why they're doing it.

Always remember that someone has probably solved the problem you're having before you. If you're stuck, just google.

Does anyone here program and learn Japanese at the same time? - Xanpakuto - 2014-01-26

So I'm getting the book learning ruby the hard way. Hopefully it will be helpful! I'm sure programmers actually forget syntax once on awhile. So do they have a reference at hand usually?

Does anyone here program and learn Japanese at the same time? - vix86 - 2014-01-26

Xanpakuto Wrote:So maybe I should reconsider not using Anki. So if I'm not going to memorize any syntax, what is there to memorize in programming?

As everyone has basically said. As a programmer you don't really memorize syntax, but that doesn't mean there aren't some things you can't memorize.

As AlgoRhythmic stated, programming is more concepts than it is solid facts, which makes dumping things into Anki a bit more difficult. There are people that can make up good concept cards though and it works for some. I think the author of the SuperMemo software, might have a number of articles that address trying to do this, which might be worth a read.

You COULD memorize glossary style terms for stuff or equations for Big-O, these are easily condensed into a flash card I think.

Additionally you could get the "the Big 4" book on design patterns and memorize the general definition for each design style.

The problem is that most programmers don't bother with memorizing these kinds of things because it makes very little sense to. Its more worth your while to read and keep a good selection of reference material on hand. These might be books that hold the concepts you need to know, bookmarks to the document for the SDK/API/language you are working with, or a bookmark to a good answer/question on StackOverflow. Over time, through repeated use alone, you'll internalize this stuff. I'd be surprised if most programmers could rattle off various sorting algorithms, but I bet many have a copy of Introduction to Algorithms within arms reach for when they do need it.

Practical experience, such as making your own programs and projects, will take you further than anything else and pay off far better than the time spent putting cards into Anki and reviewing them.

Does anyone here program and learn Japanese at the same time? - vix86 - 2014-01-26

Xanpakuto Wrote:So I'm getting the book learning ruby the hard way. Hopefully it will be helpful! I'm sure programmers actually forget syntax once on awhile. So do they have a reference at hand usually?

Yes. When I switch to a language I haven't used in awhile and I forget what the proper format for a for-loop or how I needed to set up variable declarations. I go to google and type in "for loop <lanaguage>" or "looping structures <language>" and hit the link to the first tutorial that I see.

Google is my reference for anything syntax based.

Does anyone here program and learn Japanese at the same time? - TwoMoreCharacters - 2014-01-27

I'm looking to get into using the logic to solve problems instead of mostly learning syntax.

I did a bunch of exercises on talentbuddy.co, anyone else tried it? Can you recommend something similar?

Does anyone here program and learn Japanese at the same time? - Stansfield123 - 2014-01-27

Xanpakuto Wrote:So I'm getting the book learning ruby the hard way. Hopefully it will be helpful! I'm sure programmers actually forget syntax once on awhile. So do they have a reference at hand usually?

Yeah. Google. Trust me, syntax is not a significant issue, everything is a quick google search away. Yes, programming languages are "languages", but they are very, very small languages. Maybe 0.1% of the size of a human language.

Programming is the opposite of using a human language: human speech is made up of many thousands of distinct building blocks, organized in relatively simple, linear structures (sentences, paragraphs, chapters, books); a computer program is made up of only a few different building blocks, but it is not linear - the complexity grows exponentially with size.

The challenge is the complexity of the programs we write, not the size of the languages we use. In other words, there is nothing to memorize. Every single project you will ever work on will be unique, and you will have to master its complexity all over again.

Most of the things you'll learn as an aspiring programmer will be either feeble attempts to reduce complexity, or, more realistically, methods to try and manage it.