This is exactly what I wanted. Thanks man
Show HN: I made a spaced repetition tool to master coding problems
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Re: Show HN: I made a spaced repetition tool to master coding problems
#72I've been working on a more effective leetcode site - https://deriveit.org/coding/roadmap . The goal of our site is to teach smart people how to quickly master leetcode. We put in a year's worth of thought to make things as simple as possible, and are super proud of our content. Recently, two people used our site to land Amazon. Check it out!
I see the questions aren't in hundred. Is that enough?
Re: Show HN: I made a spaced repetition tool to master coding problems
#73I feel like spaced repetition is exactly what you shouldn't do. Spaced repetition is great for rote memorization of arbitrary facts but programming is about how to think about and solve problems. If you master the methods and ideas, you should be able to derive the answers on the spot. That's better than memorization because then you can actually deal with real interviewers who 1) Want to hear your train of thought a…
This is a common misconception not supported by scientific evidence.
What experimental psychology and neuroscience research has found is that the better people memorize topics, the better they understand and reason about them.
For those interested, this book has the best compilation I've seen of such research: https://www.amazon.com/Memory-Alan-Baddeley/dp/1138326097
Edit: Of course, you can memorize things without any effort to understand. But if you are making these efforts, having an efficient and effective memorization technique can help a LOT.
Re: Show HN: I made a spaced repetition tool to master coding problems
#74Seems nice, congrats! How does the recommendation algorithm work?
currently recommends 5 problems using a ranking algorithm that calculates a score similar to this: score = ( timeSinceLastAttempt ^ 2 ) * difficulty; Anything else you'd want factored in?
Definitely the problem category!
But I see it's already been mentioned here in another thread.
Do you rank the problems solved by the user only, or all leetcode problems?
Because I think that a nice thing would be for your tool to first suggest one pb in each category, and then start recommending the category where you're the weakest.
Re: Show HN: I made a spaced repetition tool to master coding problems
#75I feel like spaced repetition is exactly what you shouldn't do. Spaced repetition is great for rote memorization of arbitrary facts but programming is about how to think about and solve problems. If you master the methods and ideas, you should be able to derive the answers on the spot. That's better than memorization because then you can actually deal with real interviewers who 1) Want to hear your train of thought a…
This is a common misconception not supported by scientific evidence. What experimental psychology and neuroscience research has found is that the better people memorize topics, the better they understand and reason about them. For those interested, this book has the best compilation I've seen of such research: https://www.amazon.com/Memory-Alan-Baddeley/dp/1138326097 Edit: Of course, you can memorize things without a…
One of the things that puzzles me is when I see say Anki flashcards for mathematics things that I never learned like that. I never intentionally learned anything in mathematics in that was and it feels very 'wrong' to me when I see people trying to learn like that. I did a lot of practice looking back, but there was absolutely no conscious memorisation - the nearest I got was at university level when I would sometimes run through the main steps in a long proof before the exams, but it would be at quite a high level when I did.
I don't know if I'm just lucky in terms of how my brain works in some way and I found I had a pretty good 'natural' memory when it came to things like learning languages, and I appreciate that this is totally anecdotal. That book looks interesting however and as somebody who teaches, I'm interested in what works for everybody, not just me.
Re: Show HN: I made a spaced repetition tool to master coding problems
#76I feel like spaced repetition is exactly what you shouldn't do. Spaced repetition is great for rote memorization of arbitrary facts but programming is about how to think about and solve problems. If you master the methods and ideas, you should be able to derive the answers on the spot. That's better than memorization because then you can actually deal with real interviewers who 1) Want to hear your train of thought a…
That’s a fair perspective but consider that spaced-repetition can be an “MVP” of the broader concept of adaptive / personalized learning. You track some state about your knowledge of the world, in this case your performance on a flash card, and optimize the next piece of educational content around it. It feels obvious to me that, in theory, we could do a lot more to leverage your current world knowledge to recommend…
Thankyou for sharing this comment. I wonder if there's some science behind adaptive learning - or it's just heuristics.
Re: Show HN: I made a spaced repetition tool to master coding problems
#77I feel like spaced repetition is exactly what you shouldn't do. Spaced repetition is great for rote memorization of arbitrary facts but programming is about how to think about and solve problems. If you master the methods and ideas, you should be able to derive the answers on the spot. That's better than memorization because then you can actually deal with real interviewers who 1) Want to hear your train of thought a…
That’s a fair perspective but consider that spaced-repetition can be an “MVP” of the broader concept of adaptive / personalized learning. You track some state about your knowledge of the world, in this case your performance on a flash card, and optimize the next piece of educational content around it. It feels obvious to me that, in theory, we could do a lot more to leverage your current world knowledge to recommend…
I read your other comments and discovered Erik Kennedy's wonderful blog :)
Re: Show HN: I made a spaced repetition tool to master coding problems
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a common misconception not supported by scientific evidence. What experimental psychology and neuroscience research has found is that the better people memorize topics, the better they understand and reason about them. For those interested, this book has the best compilation I've seen of such research: https://www.amazon.com/Memory-Alan-Baddeley/dp/1138326097 Edit: Of course, you can memorize things without a…
One of the things that puzzles me is when I see say Anki flashcards for mathematics things that I never learned like that. I never intentionally learned anything in mathematics in that was and it feels very 'wrong' to me when I see people trying to learn like that. I did a lot of practice looking back, but there was absolutely no conscious memorisation - the nearest I got was at university level when I would sometime…
SRS is not meant as the basis of learning. You study and learn first, then you input what you've learned in SRS, and it'll help you to solidify those learnings and keep them readily available when you need them in practice.
Re: Show HN: I made a spaced repetition tool to master coding problems
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Learning the concepts and using SRS are not only not mutually exclusive, they're complementary. There's no quicker way to "grok" a deep technical or mathematical insight than to simply expose yourself to it in a diversity of cognitive contexts. SRS works incredibly well because it generates this diversity as a function of regularly scheduled time. Think of it as entropy generation coupled with heavy reinforcement.
Right. I learned what binary trees were in college and didn't directly use them much afterward. Since interviews sometimes ask about trees, I started my practice of solving tree problems by practicing how to invert a binary tree. I practiced it so much that I can invert a binary tree from memory now, so that I won't get bounced from an interview like the inventor of Homebrew was from a Google interview. Most of the c…
What is inverting a binary tree? I don't think I have ever known what that means.
Re: Show HN: I made a spaced repetition tool to master coding problems
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a common misconception not supported by scientific evidence. What experimental psychology and neuroscience research has found is that the better people memorize topics, the better they understand and reason about them. For those interested, this book has the best compilation I've seen of such research: https://www.amazon.com/Memory-Alan-Baddeley/dp/1138326097 Edit: Of course, you can memorize things without a…
One of the things that puzzles me is when I see say Anki flashcards for mathematics things that I never learned like that. I never intentionally learned anything in mathematics in that was and it feels very 'wrong' to me when I see people trying to learn like that. I did a lot of practice looking back, but there was absolutely no conscious memorisation - the nearest I got was at university level when I would sometime…
I am always deathly afraid of forgetting a definition/key result in an exam.
Whenever I practice, I always have my notes in front of me and I focus on puzzling through the problem at hand rather than testing my memory.
But in an exam, for me there us always the possibility of failing to recall some fact. To combat this, I record every not-completely-obvious fact into Anki and aggressively practice it in the run-up to the exam.