Learning A New Programming Language

This is my 19th year in IT. I've learned many programming languages, databases, platforms, operating systems, etc. I learned most of them by myself. I only take one course  16 years ago which was about SQL and r4gl (a programming language on UNIX / Informix databases).
When I begin to write programmes there was dBase and Dos. It was the good times only text based programmes, one way direct flows, simple operations. But then everything has been changed one by one.
First we switch xBase databases to SQL, then Dos to Windows, then came the Internet, then web based programming, then web + windows based programming, then .NET came and it's still coming.

I've learned these languages in order
Basic -> dBase -> Clipper -> r4gl -> Visual Objects -> Visual Fox Pro -> Visual Basic -> HTML -> ASP -> Javascript -> VB.NET -> ASP.NET -> C#.NET

After learning some of them I developped a methodology to learn languages. Now I will share my live experience while I'm learning a new language "Ruby".

Generally I begin with basic rules like variable definition, operators, function and subroutine syntax, passing parameters, conditions(if, case), loops (for next, while), startings (includes etc)

Then I go thru database connections, SQL implementations reading writing to a database etc. File operations and communications (mail, http sends and reads etc)

I'll write this new experience day by day. Because I'll not be dealing with this full time there can be gaps between blogs.