[danbolt]

This is good advice.

Anecdotal advice: in my first year of university we were taught how to write programs in Java. During the summer after, I spent my free time trying to use what I learned to make little games. For each feature I implemented, I got experience with things like API documentation, file I/O, OO programming, etc. I learned a lot of new things, and was motivated to learn because it gave me something I wanted.