I’ve taken some Spanish courses over the last few years. They’ve been very good—excellent teachers, facilities, and materials. So when term ended a few months ago and I passed the exam, my natural inclination was to sign up for the next term.

However, I decided that rather than continuing with the course, I’d take a break and try to consolidate what I’d learned. I figured that the best way to do this was to meet up with some Spanish people and try to have real conversations with them. Talk. Practice.

And it’s worked out well. I started meeting and talking to Spanish people on a regular basis. And now, while I’m by no means fluent, my Spanish has improved greatly since I started this new, more active and practice-based approach.

What’s this got to do with InnerWorkings, you may ask? A lot, in fact!

Learning a language like Spanish or German has a lot in common with learning how to program. Both are complex activities. Both require a lot of dedication and hard work to achieve a reasonable degree of proficiency.

There are many aspects to learning a new language. You start off with simple phrases, like how to introduce yourself and how to describe other people and situations. Then you learn basic grammar, which involves a lot of verbs (including those tricky irregular ones). Next, it’s important to build up your vocabulary. The more words you know, the more you’ll be able to understand and express yourself.

Even with all this done, it’s still a big step to actually talk with someone in a foreign language. It’s always easier to read and write the language than it is to hold a meaningful conversation in it. And for most people, being able to hold a real conversation is the main motivation to learn a new language.

There are many resources for language learning. Grammar books teach the rules of the language, dictionaries provide vocabulary, books and movies also help. But take it from me, you will not be able to speak a language properly unless you practice regularly with a fluent speaker. It’s the difference between simply knowing about something and actually doing it.

The same situation applies to programming. You can have all the resources to hand—the latest version of Visual Studio, access to MSDN, online tutorials, great textbooks. But unless you’re getting relevant and regular on-the-job experience, it’s very difficult to ‘practice’ with a programming language or technology in a meaningful way.

This is where InnerWorkings’ unique challenge-based approach helps. The key to our approach is structured practice. We assume that you know the basics, can program competently, and can look up relevant reference sources. Where the InnerWorkings challenge makes the crucial difference is that it provides the opportunity to really practice – to put theory into practice in a realistic and supportive environment. To apply the techniques used in real-world problem solving. To write code. And to learn .NET.

If you want to learn Spanish, get talking to a fluent Spanish speaker.

And if you want to learn .NET, get coding with an InnerWorkings challenge!

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