Have you ever failed to learn a new programming language in your spare time? You pick a small project to implement, get a few functions written… and then you run out of time and motivation. So you give up, at least until the next time you give it a try. There’s a better way to learn new programming languages, a method that I’ve applied multiple times. Where starting a side project often ends in failure and little knowledge gained, this method starts with success. For example, the last time I did this was with Ruby: I started by publishing a whole new Ruby Gem, and getting a bug fix accepted into the Sinatra framework.