New concept, old language. New language, old concept

So this is something I just bumped on while reading Monadic Parser Combinators. After reading a few pages I thought I should do this practically. Unconsciously I decided to use Python. I could very well have used Factor, since it is more functional.

This led me to realise that I should take one thing at a time.

Two new things at a time == frustration

I'm already finding Factor pretty tough. Its got a really hard curve and some of the concepts which simplify the language need some pretty solid comp. sci. education. Implementing monads or parser combinators in it would have been horrible, because I don't understand them either. It can get very very frustrating, it's like writing a science paper in, say, German when you're just learning in it.

Frustration kills learning

But I'm comfortable with Python. Except for a few things I haven't tried (decorators), the language and its limitations are known, and logic flow emerges naturally.
So I'm free to concentrate on absorbing
the new concept instead of trying to make it fit to the language.

What all the above verbosity essentially wants to say is that it's hard to learn two things at once.

Wanna learn a language. Try Mango

I learnt through Lifehacker
about new site Mango which aims to make language learning free, quick and easy. So I just played around with it for a few minutes and it seems to be really good.
The first thing I really liked was the password less login. You basically just register with your email id and use that as the login. It's really annoying when a site which doesn't hold any of your private information requires a password.
Created in flash, it requires flash 9. But the interface is quite snappy and quick loading, without unnecessary bloat.
I tried the french lessons, and apart from loading quickly they were of high quality. On of the coolest things is that each phrase is colourcoded and anchored. So you can click on a specific phrase to hear it again. The slides constantly make you remember what you just learnt a few minutes ago, but that tends to get a bit repetitive and should perhaps be spaced out wider.
Overall Mango is really good for a beta. I look forward to learning something from it.

Learning

I have decided to take a break from creating software to learning some new things for a few days. So I have started learning Ruby, advanced JavaScript which I didn't know before, especially DOM scripting and Ajax. And I am also reading Beginning Algorithms which is a really good book for an introduction to algorithms in a easy to understand concrete way. That said I am starting to like Ruby and feel the same enjoyment that is felt when coding in Python. I have not entirely abandoned projects though. They are on the drawing board and in the design process.
School begins from tomorrow after three weeks of Diwali vacations and we have lots of exams coming up which will severely curtail my computer time. I will be freed only in the second week of December when preparations for the school Sports Day begins and studies take a backseat.
This is the last day of enjoyment so I go of to enjoy...