James Edward Gray II wrote:
> Sy wrote:
> > Fine.  I like Ruby.  I want to learn Ruby.  How do I work on the
> > problem of motivation?
>  ...
> > Hack a little every day?  Read a little every day?  What books, what
> > tutorials, what news channels?
> 
> In my opinion, there is one true secret to learning to program.  Ready?
> Here comes all my ancient wisdom in one rule:
> 
> Write code.

I agree: write code

In the past to learn a new language or technology I've thought up a
personal project to work on, which gave me motivation to achieve a
certain goal.

Contributing to or starting your own open source / free software
project makes things more exciting as there is the potential others
might start using your code. This can be a great motivational aid -
careful though, it can become addictive!

Cheers,
Rob