[gsz]

I also speak three languages, and I'm learning another two. I'm also a hacker. I find programming and foreign languages highly complimentary. In both cases I'm supposed to communicate ideas in a specific vocabulary and grammar.

Also, my two geeky pre-teen sons equally like learning Python and French (on Duolingo).

Of course, I learn languages because I'm interested in the culture of the people who speak those languages. In the same way, I learn programming languages to broaden my way of thinking about computing.

[sentenza]

Again, it might very well be that my observations are specific to myself and my body/brain.

What I'd like to add to my previous post is that the effect appears when I do both things under heavy load. Especially the language learning method I have is much more strenuous than what most people use.

Here's what I do: Obviously there are times where I learn the basics of the language and basic vocabulary. The main part of my learning effort, however, consists of watching movies/television.

What makes this so hard, is that I start doing so when I have only a very basic grip on the language, so that I understand very little of the language I'm trying to absorb. While watching, I force myself to actively try and understand/infer as much as I can. By this I mean that I touch my cognitive load limit.

When I'm "fresh", this is realy exhausting. When I mix it with complementary strenuous work (say, designing a numerical algoritm), it causes headaches and slight nausea.

I want to stress that this method I use is not suitable for everybody and I'd really recommend against trying to do it for the first foreign language. The reason I resort to it is that I am more of a speech person than a written text person and I am also somewhat lazy regarding textbook language study.

It might also be useful to note that, while my method takes less learning time than using a book or working with a tandem partner, it requires much more reconvalescence. So my net learning speed might be on par or even slower than the speed of somebody using duolingo or doing an advanced university course.