Introduction:

I have read and heard advice, about learning programming by accepting programming projects. I need real assistance to understand this, because:

Problem:

Although, it would seem to me that one would gain much more technical knowledge by doing, real world projects, if one doesn't know much about a technology, it would add much more risk to the actual delivery of the final product! Even the smallest of real world projects could be too much for a newbie.

There is a contradiction here:

• You need to know the job to do it!

and

• It's recommended to do the job, in order to learn it!

Question:

Any personal experiences in this case would be very pleasant to know while describing:

• How new was the subject to you? didn't have a clue at all? Or, did you have experience with similar technologies?
• Was it a solo project or were you in a team? If team, then did others help you with learning it?
• Did it work as expected? Did you deliver on time?
• Do you recommend this approach to others as well?