Is taking 4 months to learn a single language abnormal?

[33zeR0]

I hear this from a lot of people that they take just a month to learn a language. But, I take around 4 months to learn from top to bottom. Someone told me, programming ain't for me. Am I wrong. I'd like some advice from fellow programmers

[GreezyJeezy]

kinda depends on what language it is. i learned python in 12 days. but haskell took like 3 weeks for me so idk.

[afyeung]

If it's HTML 4 months is long. If it's Java or C or the like and you want to understand actual computer science, 4 months is nothing. 

[Dredgy]

No it's not abnormal. It takes years for fluency, even for basic languages.

 

I've been using HTML and CSS for over a decade, and still learnt something new on the last website I built. And people think those are "basic" (in reality, most people are just really bad at it).

 

Likewise with F# - while I don't use it day to day, it's where the majority of my income comes from and I'm sure there's dozens of little tricks I'm missing out on.

 

While I can jump into any language pretty much straight away, that's not fluency. It's conversational at best.

 

When you learn, do it properly and don't rush into it for bragging rights. Take the time to be better at it then everyone else. One great specialist is worth many good all-rounders.

[Psycosis86]

I think learning the basics and being able to write simple programs shouldn't take too long, dependent on the language of course. However, really understanding a language and being able to write more complex programs can take some time.

[Prysin]

in general, no. 4 months is not very long.

[steezemageeze]

How do you guys learn languages so fast? I've been wanting to get into programming, but I can't even figure out where to get started. I know a little HTML from school last year and I've been learning COBOL at vo-tech all of this year (my teacher is a  bit old fashioned lol. COBOL, then RPG, then SQL, then Visual Basic), but I want to get into Python or something. Or maybe just keep working on HTML. I don't really know honestly. 

[waxbytes]

It takes the time it takes.

What level of proficiency is the real question.

[scottyseng]

9 hours ago, 33zeR0 said:

I hear this from a lot of people that they take just a month to learn a language. But, I take around 4 months to learn from top to bottom. Someone told me, programming ain't for me. Am I wrong. I'd like some advice from fellow programmers

What matters more isn't learning the syntax of the language itself, but the problem solving skills. For example, can you break down and solve a task given to you. That's what programmers are paid more for...not if they can code a problem that's already solved / laid out for them.

 

As for learning language speed, it's a lot of it depends. If it's HTML / CSS, that is kind of long. If it's anything else, it varies by how much time you put into it / how much of your brain is geared for problem solving. But what matters more is not comparing yourself to others, what matters more is getting the results and practicing hard enough.

 

I myself suck at drawing anime (I'm a realism artist)...but I've been practicing every day for the past few years. I'm kind of decent at it now.

[DevBlox]

It depends on many factors. Like how experienced you are, how complicated the language is, how much time you spend and how you learn. Also as mentioned, you can learn to code in a language fairly quickly, but fluency comes over time. I would not sweat those details (the h8ers lol), put effort into it and you will succeed, if you are passionate about coding you will never hate it.

[cluelessgenius]

listen idk who told you that but you dont learn a language in month. you might pick up the basics and the syntax in a month but learning a language is more.

also i had a class mate in college ho told me the exact same thing. that maybe i picked the wrong field of study because i was asking so many questions and being a very slow learner. what he didnt know is that i was being extra thorough thats all. he eventuallly ended up being my rival kinda but the moral of the story is that a lot of people told me to just quit in the end. and i didt give a shit because i knew this is what i wanted to do and theres is nothnig they can do to stop me. as long as you are catching up with whats happening in class and dont get totally lost you really shouldnt care for what other might think you should do.

[33zeR0]

I took 4 months to learn C++ to the core and another 4 months to learn JS and 2 frameworks(node and angular)

[LePawel]

1 hour ago, 33zeR0 said:

I took 4 months to learn C++ to the core and another 4 months to learn JS and 2 frameworks(node and angular)

Was C++ was your first language, this sounds like total BS.

[InitializingDev]

Everyone's brain varies and you will always not understand something straight away. The thing to know if programming is for you is simple... Do you enjoy it? Is it something you want to be? There's, of course, way more than this, however, these are the questions you need to ask. For me personally, it takes me a very long time to get fluent at a language. Took me about a year to get fluent at HTML and CSS when I was young. Now I am on to bigger things that challenge me a lot more. It sounds stupid that it took em nearly a year to learn HTML and CSS but now after all that I would think I am quite fluent in those languages. Remember too that lots of languages share similar or completely different syntax and operation so if you are completely new to programming it could just be that you are at the new stages. I hope this helped. If not, sorry... 

[Sergio45]

I would say that learning anything in general and how long it takes depends on the person. For example I have ADD and sometimes it takes longer for me to understand something than the person sitting next to me. For programming language (C#) I changed my major for Networking and once I was done with that I went back to programming. I did have to refresh myself on the language and pretty much re-learn it. As long as you keep at it, you will learn as you progress deeper into the language. I am still learning new things about C# and still don't know everything that there is to the language. Just keep at it. 

[33zeR0]

5 hours ago, LePawel said:

Was C++ was your first language, this sounds like total BS.

C++ was started in school for me. That's where I developed my interest and went on to learn myself.

[Crowes]

18 hours ago, afyeung said:

If it's HTML 4 months is long. If it's Java or C or the like and you want to understand actual computer science, 4 months is nothing. 

This. Heavilly depends on the complexity.

 

HTML took me about a month, CSS has taken about a full year to get perfected, and that's still working. 

[afyeung]

1 hour ago, Crowes said:

This. Heavilly depends on the complexity.

 

HTML took me about a month, CSS has taken about a full year to get perfected, and that's still working. 

I agree completely. Perfecting any language whether computer or human can take a very long time.

[Crowes]

2 hours ago, afyeung said:

I agree completely. Perfecting any language whether computer or human can take a very long time.

Oh yeah. I mean, once you've learnt one, learning another is a case of mastering the syntax. Perfecting your knowledge of the constraints and possibilities is going to take you quite a while.

[Gabriel]

I've been learning Java for 12 years and still learning

[as96]

On 22/3/2016 at 0:28 AM, 33zeR0 said:

Someone told me, programming ain't for me. Am I wrong. I'd like some advice from fellow programmers

That's a stupid person, if you like programming don't give up.

[handymanshandle]

On 3/23/2016 at 2:03 PM, afyeung said:

I agree completely. Perfecting any language whether computer or human can take a very long time.

I don't know any computer languages but yeah it takes a long time and also depends heavily on the difficulty of that language.

I've been taking French since 8th grade, I'm currently a sophomore in high school. I can understand most things in spoken and written French but not like fluent to the point I get almost everything correct.

[Azgoth 2]

Most people can usually learn the basics of most languages (i.e., basic syntax, indentation, block structure, etc), well enough to write some short programs, in a week or two.  It takes a bit longer to really learn a lot of ins and outs of the language's equivalent of a standard library, to the point where you can write longer programs (a few hundred lines-ish) without too much pain and can see, pretty quickly, how to approach a problem using the language.  You can probably get to this point in a few months for most languages--four months wouldn't be too bad--if you're learning in your spare time.  But getting to the point where you know almost all of the quirks of a language, a lot of newt tricks, and the workings of both the standard library and some extra libraries, well, that can take much longer--well over a year.

 

It also depends on the language a lot.  Python will be much faster to learn than, say, C for most people.  How many languages you know also affects your speed: when learning your first language, you have to learn about things like types and variables and control flow and all that, on top of how your specific language does (or doesn't do) those things.  When learning a second language, you should already have a pretty good foundation in the basic concepts of programming, so most of what you're learning is how this particular language does things.  But the biggest factor is probably how much time you can spend learning, as with everything.  A few hours a day, almost every day?  You can get pretty good with most languages in a few weeks.  Maybe an hour or two every few days, or ever week?  It'll take a lot longer.

 

But all things considered, a few months is a pretty good timeline for learning a language at a  beginner/intermediate level.  I.e., being comfortable writing code, only referring to documentation for new libraries you're using or ones you use infrequently, etc.

[Beskamir]

Largely depends on how much time you are putting in per day and how many languages you know before you begin. In university, fall and winter semesters are (I think) each 4 months long, and (at least in first year) they spend an entire semester teaching a single language. That's 4 months for Python and 4 months for Java. Oh and they didn't actually teach us all the fine details of either... So no I don't think this abnormal in any way. Regardless as long as you want to learn something then there is no reason why you should consider it "not being for you", even if it seems to take a while.

[hegemott]

Depends on the definition of 'learn' to me. I 'learned' C# in a month or two in school. But it took me up to a year before I understood certain parts of the language such as disposing objects. I did it before, but only then did I actually grow to understand how it worked. Such parts of a language are sometimes not learned for months, because you simply don't encounter them. How fast a language is learned depends a lot on previous experience (first language is often tougher than second, for example, learning object-oriented is tougher if you're used to procedural). You can learn the basics of how to write a program in that language in a week or two, but before you can actually write a decently functioning program can take months.