As a software tester many times we need to learn more than one programming language due to either project dependency or personal interest. In this short post I am sharing few tips from my experience on how to overcome the starting problem and learn a new language with step by step approach.
- Start with minimum environment needed.
- Spend some time leaning the features of any popular IDE, most importantly how to debug code.
- Begin with a simple problem statement.
- Solve the problem using the programming language you already know. For example if you know Java, solve the problem using Java first. This step will not take much time.
- Identify the concepts used in solving the problem like variables, loops, classes, file handling, exception handling etc needed for solving the problem from step3.
- Now try to learn and implement same using the new language for example Python. You can take help from your favourite source (blogs/videos/books)
- If you already have any existing code related to the problem, try to understand the code flow using debugger (this step is very important).
- Once comfortable, add few unit tests check if you have covered the suggestions given by your testing mind.
- Now based on your unit testing try to optimise the code you have written before.
- Once comfortable in step9, time to move to step 3 again for picking the next problem to solve.