Applying the Pareto Principle To Learn a New Programming Language

In this article, I will discuss how you can apply the Pareto principle to quickly learn a new programming language and start solving real-world problems while you develop a deeper understanding of the programming language.

What Is the Pareto Principle?

The Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, states that for many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes. Applying this to a personal level, 80% of your work-related output could come from only 20% of your time. I first came to know about this principle after reading the book "The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More with Less" written by Richard Koch.

How to Apply the Pareto Principle to Quickly Learn a New Programming Language

When I initially started to learn programming, I used inefficient methods to learn it. I was watching hours and hours of video courses and reading books trying to master all the concepts that ever existed in the programming language before attempting to solve any real-world problems. By doing this, I was losing motivation to continue to learn. Over time, I realized that this is not an efficient way to learn a new skill. Learning about the 80/20 rule made me realize that by learning around 20% of the concepts in a programming language I could solve 80% of the problems.  

I needed to learn a new programming language in a short period of time a couple of times. The first time, I was using a programming language at work that was not easy to use for attending interviews, and I wanted to switch to a new programming language for solving problems in technical interviews. The second time, I was in a new team that used a completely new programming language that I had never used in the past. I used the following 4-step approach which made it efficient to learn the new programming language while keeping me motivated to increase my skill level with the programming language.

• Step 1: Identify key concepts of the programming language. 
  • Identify key concepts such as data structures, flow control statements, functions, classes, etc.
• Step 2: Spend 20% of your effort to learn these key concepts.
  • Pick up a book or a course, and focus on learning only the key concepts identified in Step 1.
• Step 3: Solve some real-life problems using these concepts. 
  • Depending on the purpose of learning, pick some real-life problems and try to solve them using the concepts that you learned in the 2 steps above. For example, if you are planning to do technical interviews, try to solve some problems from websites like LeetCode or HackerRank.
• Step 4: Learn additional concepts as you encounter them.
  • If you are stuck solving the problem, search for how to solve this problem and learn the additional advanced concepts as you encounter them.

What Are Some Important Programming Concepts?

As an example, let's look at some of the core concepts of Python that can be quickly learned before attempting to solve some problems using Python:

• Data structures: Review important available data structures such as strings, lists, tuples, dictionaries, and sets.
• Loops: Python offers two types of loops - the "for" loop and the "while" loop.  Also, understand how to use continue and break statements within the loops.
• Conditional statements: Understand how to use conditional statements such as if, else, and elif.
• Logical operators: Learn logical operators such as and, or, not, etc. 
• Functions: Learn how to define functions, pass arguments to the functions, and return values from the functions.
• Classes: Learn how to create and use Classes.
• Important built-in functions: Try to learn important built-in functions such as range(), format(), max(), min(), len(), type(), sorted(), print(), round(), etc.
• Other concepts: Lambdas, list comprehensions

Conclusion

Learning a new programming language may look daunting but leveraging the Pareto principle will make it easier to learn it quickly by spending 20% of the time mastering important concepts such as data structures, loops, conditional statements, functions, and classes and applying the knowledge to solve 80% of real-life problems.