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Ask HN: How to remember technical topics which you don’t use/refer everyday?

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Re: Ask HN: How to remember technical topics which you don’t use/refer everyday?

#51

Post by jimmygrapes »

DigitallyFidget wrote: post #45

Teach it. I don't know why nobody else has suggested this. If you want to learn, really learn something. Self educate, then teach it to someone else. You'll have to really educate yourself on the subject, but once you do.. Blog post, Twitter, Youtube, Linked-In, or whatever platform you want to use. You'll get corrections if you're wrong about something, and hopefully a load of questions that will make you dig furthe…

Agreed 100% that teaching is the best form of solidifying learning (that is, second to consistent application of the knowledge), but there's something that's been troubling me lately: is it the act of teaching that works, or the witnessing of the teaching being learned?

In other words, if you are a "bad" teacher -- if your students do not understand, do not care, or do not otherwise learn from what you impart -- does the mere act of trying to pass on the information work for retaining/refining the information yourself? And if so, is a blog or forum post or drunken rant at a pub any different than a lecture?

I ask because I have found myself expounding on things in informal contexts and learning more about my own ideas as I go, with the supposed intention of telling and teaching others, but my feedback at times has been "dude you suck at explaining this". I do try to adjust according to feedback, but useful feedback is rare, especially when marred by the emotional reaction of "what do you mean I suck?? you sure you ain't just stupid??" etc.

Re: Ask HN: How to remember technical topics which you don’t use/refer everyday?

#52

Post by kevan »

sotu wrote: post #38

I use flashcards with active recall style learning. There's actually a great app I use called "Active Recall" that sets you up with this - you have to work a bit to get the cards you want but after you can refer back to them easily and it helps with memorization https://activerecall.com is their site

I've found this really effective too. I've been using Anki instead but same general idea. Ramping up on new topics still takes decent time and effort but I've been really surprised how easy it is to retain things after the initial learn.

Re: Ask HN: How to remember technical topics which you don’t use/refer everyday?

#53

Post by wenc »

I think you're referring to "bicycle skills" [1], that is, skills that you need to pre-learn so that you can call upon them when you need to. (like knowing how to ride a bike on vacation -- you can't learn it on the spot, so you would have needed to have pre-learned it. Swimming is another skill in the same ilk. Languages is another.).

For a lot of programmers, SQL is such a skill. Most programmers suck at SQL because they don't use SQL often enough so they forget the syntax and have to recall it from scratch each time they need it. It's a hidden disability in the software development world.

The answer is that you have to have learned the skill up to a certain level of proficiency before letting it go. You cannot get there by dabbling each time. There's a minimum threshold after which the skill doesn't simply evaporate from memory and recall is fast. But it takes a certain investment of time and effort.

[1] https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2012/08/01/bicycle-skills/

Re: Ask HN: How to remember technical topics which you don’t use/refer everyday?

#54

Post by brianzelip »

simonw wrote: post #42

Make notes, in private and in public. I have a private "notes" repo on GitHub where I keep notes in the issues (the repo itself is empty). Any time I'm trying out a new piece of software I open an issue there, then add notes on the issue comments as I figure things out. I use GitHub issues because they have excellent backups and they show up on GitHub search - plus there's a really good API which I use to periodicall…

Cool use of a GH repo. Thanks for Datasette, et al.!

Re: Ask HN: How to remember technical topics which you don’t use/refer everyday?

#58

Post by djmips »

chx wrote: post #56

Post it on Stackoverflow. I can't even count how many times I found myself in a situation where I had no idea what was going, googled and found the answer on SO/SE written by myself. Sometimes as recent as two years ago, sometimes a decade ago.

Definitely documenting works even if you never refer to it again. Just the process of writing it up helps it stick. I like to put it on the internal company wiki if it's too specific but Stack Overflow sounds like a good idea for general topics.

Re: Ask HN: How to remember technical topics which you don’t use/refer everyday?

#59

Post by j7ake »

jimmygrapes wrote: post #51
DigitallyFidget wrote: post #45

Teach it. I don't know why nobody else has suggested this. If you want to learn, really learn something. Self educate, then teach it to someone else. You'll have to really educate yourself on the subject, but once you do.. Blog post, Twitter, Youtube, Linked-In, or whatever platform you want to use. You'll get corrections if you're wrong about something, and hopefully a load of questions that will make you dig furthe…

Agreed 100% that teaching is the best form of solidifying learning (that is, second to consistent application of the knowledge), but there's something that's been troubling me lately: is it the act of teaching that works, or the witnessing of the teaching being learned? In other words, if you are a "bad" teacher -- if your students do not understand, do not care, or do not otherwise learn from what you impart -- does…

I find it useful because there’s social pressure to present yourself as a knowledgeable person.

No one wants to fumble in public like an idiot and waste people’s time, so you prepare for the material as well as possible questions.

Re: Ask HN: How to remember technical topics which you don’t use/refer everyday?

#60

Post by enasterosophes »

It sounds like an X-Y problem [1].

X: I want to be able to recall relevant information when it's needed.

Y: How do I retain long-term memory of technical topics without practising them every day?

To solve X, it is sufficient to be able to reliably rediscover information as it is needed. Putting it into long-term memory stored inside your brain is just one layer of that.

Think of it like a computing architecture, where there are layers of data retention with trade-offs for speed vs reliability vs size. You don't just have a CPU and RAM and a hard drive. A modern computer has various CPU caches, RAM, ssds and rotational drives, possibly combined with offsite storage, cloud storage, tape drives, cdroms and usb sticks.

They all have tradeoffs: RAM is pretty fast, but not as fast as CPU cache, but it holds a lot more than cache, but it doesn't hold as much as an ssd, which in turn is a lot slower than RAM, but not as slow as a hdd, and meanwhile can hold a lot more than RAM, but (generally) not as much as that same hdd. You get the most from your computer by understanding these tradeoffs, not by trying to make your ssd do triple-duty as RAM+ssd+hdd.

Likewise, optimizing your brain doesn't mean trying to force it to keep arbitrary technical data/concepts only in long-term memory. Instead, you are already doing the right thing by keeping the information distributed across the internet, in books, in the brains of people who you teach and learn from, and knowing how to re-derive logically-deducible concepts from axioms, or rediscover data from first principals using experimentation and trial-and-error.

Let your brain do what it does best, which is act as a survival machine optimized for getting mates, finding food, and escaping lions.

Don't hamstring that machine by giving it unrealistic goals like "damnit you simply MUST be able to recall all relevant formulae for orbital mechanics and know how to write down the Navier-Stokes and Black-Scholes equations off the cuff and what is the full instruction set for the ARMv8-A architecture."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem

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