Ask HN: How do you learn complex, dense technical information?

Overall similiar to this, except I get a pencil and a couple of sheets of 11x17” paper and I incrementally build concept maps[0]. These help me memorize entities and relationships, identify abstractions, chunk details, etc. I also use Visual Understanding Environment[1] and there are other good concept mapping tools available.

IMHO mind maps are a more recent, dumbed-down subset of concept maps. I don't use them. My daughter has been using the 11x17” paper and pencil approach for the past few years to ace science and other subjects.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept_map [1] https://vue.tufts.edu/

Try a printer + highlighter.

It’s hard to explain why it works, but I find that having a physical copy helps me grok technical documents and re-find the details later.

Apply other the advice in this thread too, but add a highlighter, notes, and light manual indexing.

Here is something that has helped me a lot. It's a paper on how to read academic papers. You can extract the general idea and apply to many other technical reading material.

https://web.stanford.edu/class/ee384m/Handouts/HowtoReadPape...

When you say "learn", I am assuming you mean getting to the point where you can apply the knowledge. It sounds like the problem you are trying to solve is to decrease this "learning" time and not so much increase your retention of information.

I haven't done any kernel development, I'm assuming it's highly technical and you get can't skim through materials.

I think if you are able to painstakingly go through technical documentation, that is a special ability. My guess is it probably sets you apart from many devs.

Getting a big picture is a great idea as you build a mental map of important topic areas to cover and gives you some form of mental motivation or direction. Better if someone has already done this, so you can save your time.

For more technical subject matter though, those fine details make a big difference when trying to apply it. I don't know if there is a way to avoid doing that. Skimming things I find wastes a lot of time because when you try to actually build you get stuck because of some important detailed buried on page X paragraph Y.

Some other areas of development aren't as intense so you can get away with not knowing everything and be able to build something pretty impressive.

For dense technical information, my method is to take research-like notes, cross-referenced in my note-taking app and improve these notes over time. I save time by not re-learning and re-searching supporting materials.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been going back and forth with the notion of hiring a private tutor/teacher (not in school and not for work) that’s in a PhD program at a local uni for a few months.

For the past +5 years, I’ve been teaching myself programming, math, and any related matters, yet it’s a slow and grueling process with many side paths that I go down. I’m tired of this! I want to dive into a book on financial derivative modeling and have someone next to me explain any concepts I don’t understand instead of me going down the rabbit hole and extending the time it takes to complete my goal.

Have any of you ever tried this? If so, how’d it go?