On: What Toy Apps would you write in order to learn a language?

I'm a web developer, so my sample app is either a blog or a Twitter client. This shows me:

* URL handling

* OAuth

* The HTTP client module the language uses

* The storage model

And other common webby things.

I think the problem with this approach is that it's forcing you relying on a web framework and eventually on libraries.

As an exemple a lot of people know how to make a blog in rails but only a part of them really understand what's a class variable.

I'm not saying it doesn't work, just that you could ending up knowing a framework not a language.

> I'm not saying it doesn't work, just that you could ending up knowing a framework not a language.

I agree I'm blurring the lines a little, but when I talk about liking 'Python' or 'Javascript' I mean not just the syntax, but the libraries, the package managers, and other parts of the surrounding toolset.

There are some languages with great syntax, but small communities and little library support. Checking the whole, bigger picture gives me a feel as to whether it's something I'd like to use in production.

If you are interested in web development, this is the ideal way to learn the language. You won't just learn the language, you'll have immediate practical applications for the language constructs.

Unlike the people you speak of, someone trying to learn the language would stop and learn what a class variable is. This is exactly how I learned Rails and the Ruby language. I just dove in to Rails and went to Ruby references along the way.