My short list of the skills that have helped me the most in my career as a software engineer is not sorted. But the ability to quickly learn things is easily on that list. With technology constantly and rapidly changing, small improvements in the speed at which I learn things can have a big and cumulative impact on my productivity. But we rarely discuss personal learning strategies. What are your personal strategies? Please consider mentioning even what you consider to be dead obvious. It might not be to others.
Ask HN: How do you personally learn?
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Re: Ask HN: How do you personally learn?
#2I'll start with a few off the top of my head:
- Make sure it's something I'm interested in learning. There is no substitute for passion.
- Find a hero. Find someone who is already an expert and attempt to get as good as they are. But be realistic that you don't ever need to become as good as they are. It's just something that helps you focus on where you are headed.
- Have a list of other things you want to learn. You will get stuck a lot in the beginning and it's better to just quickly switch to something else when you are stuck and let your subconscious work on what you are stuck on. Sitting in front of a screen frustrated and trying to get unstuck is usually a big waste of time.
- Go for a walk. Some of my best thinking is during a walk. And there's mounting evidence that exercise generates new neurons.
Re: Ask HN: How do you personally learn?
#3Deconstruction. The ability to break something down into its smallest parts, and understand how the relationship of those parts makes something tick, will teach you how it works. It also them gives you the ability to innovate, as when you put the parts back together, you can do so in new ways.
Re: Ask HN: How do you personally learn?
#4Deconstruction. The ability to break something down into its smallest parts, and understand how the relationship of those parts makes something tick, will teach you how it works. It also them gives you the ability to innovate, as when you put the parts back together, you can do so in new ways.
This is a great one. It's actually so important it's a separate item on my short list of top skills. I have it as "ability to debug", but "ability to decontruct" is a better and more general category. Thanks!
Re: Ask HN: How do you personally learn?
#5Through a series of costly and humiliating mistakes
Re: Ask HN: How do you personally learn?
#6I try to understand things as deep as possible, often that goes together with building it myself. I am not satisfied with “that’s the way it works”. That worked well for a lot of things, I often read other people’s code to see how stuff works. This approach is the reason why I refuse to use Kubernetes; I wasn’t able to understand it, it has just been too complicated so far.
Re: Ask HN: How do you personally learn?
#7I'll start with a few off the top of my head: - Make sure it's something I'm interested in learning. There is no substitute for passion. - Find a hero. Find someone who is already an expert and attempt to get as good as they are. But be realistic that you don't ever need to become as good as they are. It's just something that helps you focus on where you are headed. - Have a list of other things you want to learn. Yo…
> there's mounting evidence that exercise generates new neurons.
This wikipedia article is one of my favorite discoveries. The list of benefits just keeps going.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurobiological_effects_of_phy...
Re: Ask HN: How do you personally learn?
#8I've been doing an audio blog on just that topic: https://alchemist.camp/learning-machine
I've experimented a lot with MOOCs, OCW, spaced repetition, paid courses, teaching strategies, etc. The specific ideas I've recently been most focused on when learning are:
- The depth of processing. I learn much faster and retain the knowledge/skills longer when I take a very active approach that involves deeply processing the material I'm learning.
- Making my studies more game-like. Games are fantastic, not only for motivation, but also for learning.
- Tightening my learn-use loop.
Re: Ask HN: How do you personally learn?
#9For most skills, I absolutely must have a small project in mind from the beginning. I have no patience for learning a new language or tool if I don't have a particular project that uses it.
Re: Ask HN: How do you personally learn?
#10I can learn things quickly. Read a few chapters, poke at some code, make something work.
I do however need a few months to _understand_ something. I have found that this "incubation" time works well for me, and I find myself far more comfortable with the subject afterwards.