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I Wrote Down Everything I Learned While Programming for a Month

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Re: I Wrote Down Everything I Learned While Programming for a Month

#41

Post by Erwin »

I've recently switched from a giant append-only text file which I've been using for 18 years, to using TiddlyWiki -- a personal wiki. Each journal entry (or any wiki page within it) can be tagged and you can view pages across tags, so the ideas is to tag the journal with topics and then later transfer it to some learning article about that specific topic (or any part of my past life in general).

I've found that I constantly scan HN etc. for new articles, may read them through and it gets weakly stored in some kind of background memory, but it doesn't really make me form a sufficient opinion on the subject. 15 years ago information was scarce (C/C++ user's journal only came out once a month!) or expensive (E.g. O'Reilly books), or questionable (Usenet groups). Nowadays there's just a constant stream of interesting things happening.

Re: I Wrote Down Everything I Learned While Programming for a Month

#42

Post by tangue »

askafriend wrote: post #33
lwerdna wrote: post #11

Here's a poor man's version of dnote in my .bashrc. It's the only thing I've used consistently: notes() { local fpath=$HOME/notes.md if [ "$1" == "gvim" ]; then gvim + $fpath elif [ "$1" == "vim" ]; then gvim + $fpath elif [ "$1" == "date" ]; then echo '' >> $fpath echo '# '`date +"%m-%d-%Y-%T"` >> $fpath echo '---------------------' >> $fpath elif [ "$1" == "" ]; then less +G $fpath else echo '' >> $fpath echo $@ >>…

Why not just use Notes.app?

Notes will try to insert smart quotes in your code and other silent changes (made to improve text notes but catastrophic for code.)

Re: I Wrote Down Everything I Learned While Programming for a Month

#43

Post by commandlinefan »

stockkid wrote: post #2

I wanted to measure how much I was really learning while programming. So I wrote down notes every time I learned something for an entire month in January. The result revealed that we do not actually learn much and that we have misconception about 'learning.'

I spend a lot of time thinking on this - how to become a better programmer, and how to learn more effectively. I find myself vacillating between googling "how do I get the drop-down to stop showing up behind the button" and reading "Javascript: The Definitive Guide" cover to cover. In the long run, I believe that I get more out of real deep-dives into the core of the subject matter, but I worry that I don't have much specific to show for it.

Re: I Wrote Down Everything I Learned While Programming for a Month

#44

Post by lwesley »

yathern wrote: post #9

Interesting study - I think it's a great idea! Though I disagree with the statement 'we do not actually learn much'. Most learning is very hard to condense into a short note. For example, "Booleans have a toString method in JS" is a tiny factoid that, yes, is something that can be learned. But I think it is only a minor fraction of what is actually learned. An tennis player may write down what they learn in a month,…

Agree. Learning is more about building a web of interconnected idea, generating new insight, refining existing idea.

Re: I Wrote Down Everything I Learned While Programming for a Month

#46

Post by swsieber »

cortesoft wrote: post #30
TeMPOraL wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't that the mantra of BI? Be careful what you measure, because that is what you will improve. The corollary is that you don't improve what you don't measure. > Or is it sufficient to just know that I'm grokking more each day, and that is reflected in my work? OP's point is, I believe, that you don't know that you're really grokking much of anything and how much it's actually reflected in your work, because you'r…

> The corollary is that you don't improve what you don't measure. I mean, this is a nice saying, but it is pretty clearly not true. Lots of things that aren't measured are improved; we have not measured my two year olds vocabulary at all, but it is certainly improving.

Indeed. The correct corralary is "Things that don't improve aren't being measured"

E.g. negating A => B yields !B => !A

Re: I Wrote Down Everything I Learned While Programming for a Month

#47

Post by stockkid »

yathern wrote: post #9

Interesting study - I think it's a great idea! Though I disagree with the statement 'we do not actually learn much'. Most learning is very hard to condense into a short note. For example, "Booleans have a toString method in JS" is a tiny factoid that, yes, is something that can be learned. But I think it is only a minor fraction of what is actually learned. An tennis player may write down what they learn in a month,…

Author here. I agree. Some things we learn cannot be easily quantified. For example, the way I write code has changed compared to years ago. But I cannot put in words what it is that made me so.

It makes me think maybe my tool is better suited for more obvious learnings. One applicable demographic would be beginner programmers because I remember that when I started coding I had to learn many obvious things such as API, language features, etc. And even seasoned programmers are always beginners at some things.

Re: I Wrote Down Everything I Learned While Programming for a Month

#48

Post by jeroennoels »

yathern wrote: post #9

Interesting study - I think it's a great idea! Though I disagree with the statement 'we do not actually learn much'. Most learning is very hard to condense into a short note. For example, "Booleans have a toString method in JS" is a tiny factoid that, yes, is something that can be learned. But I think it is only a minor fraction of what is actually learned. An tennis player may write down what they learn in a month,…

Peter Naur's "Programming as theory building" comes to mind: https://software-carpentry.org/blog/2016/10/programming-as-t...

Re: I Wrote Down Everything I Learned While Programming for a Month

#49

Post by jayliew »

swsieber wrote: post #46
cortesoft wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The corollary is that you don't improve what you don't measure. I mean, this is a nice saying, but it is pretty clearly not true. Lots of things that aren't measured are improved; we have not measured my two year olds vocabulary at all, but it is certainly improving.

Indeed. The correct corralary is "Things that don't improve aren't being measured" E.g. negating A => B yields !B => !A

So measuring learning is a good thing, because it means you will likely be more deliberate in actually getting better at it, as opposed to just leaving it up to chance

Re: I Wrote Down Everything I Learned While Programming for a Month

#50

Post by jayliew »

commandlinefan wrote: post #43
stockkid wrote: post #2

I wanted to measure how much I was really learning while programming. So I wrote down notes every time I learned something for an entire month in January. The result revealed that we do not actually learn much and that we have misconception about 'learning.'

I spend a lot of time thinking on this - how to become a better programmer, and how to learn more effectively. I find myself vacillating between googling "how do I get the drop-down to stop showing up behind the button" and reading "Javascript: The Definitive Guide" cover to cover. In the long run, I believe that I get more out of real deep-dives into the core of the subject matter, but I worry that I don't have much…

I suppose that makes a case for having a portfolio of projects and "how I made this" type blog posts, because it can serve as a proxy for the kind of things you have learned and done, as well as the kind of challenges you had to overcome to accomplish
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