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Practice Makes Perfect

How do you learn a new language?

We all know how language classes work. Say that you’re going to take a French class. It goes like this:

• In lecture, you listen to the teacher speak French.
• You, yourself, speak French as little as possible.
• You do the assignments, but that’s it.
• At the end of the class, you speak fluent French.

Yeah, right. That is not how it works.

How do you really learn a new language?

Now, let’s say that you really want to learn French. How do you do it?

• In lecture, you listen to the teacher speak French.
• You read French, you write French.
• You listen to others speak French.
• You speak French as much as possible.
• You find other French speakers and speak French with them.
• At the end of the class, you actually do speak fluent French.

What’s that got to do with computer stuff?

Learning Unix or C is just the same.

• In lecture, you watch the teacher use Unix and C.
• Use Unix: create files, remove them, copy them, etc. Not just for the assignment—do this before the assignment, as the concepts are introduced in class. That way, you’ll become fluent with the concepts before the pressure of homework is upon you.
• Use C. Write programs that use concepts that were introduced in class.
• At the end of the class, you actually can use Unix and C.