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Ask HN: Do you have a process or a framework to learn specific skills quickly?

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Re: Ask HN: Do you have a process or a framework to learn specific skills quickly?

#101

Post by scarecrowbob »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #85
scarecrowbob wrote: post #37

I learn a lot of songs, both lyrics and performance on other instruments. I've memorized 500-800, and I have a couple hundred tunes I routinely perform in front of people. Slow, perfect practice of component parts in all things is the only easy way to gain skills, IMO. Long-term periodic repetition is the easy way to keep skills. So, for instance, I can learn most generic country songs in about an hour. As with most…

If you're not already familiar with the term, it's "spaced repetition" - And is big in learning/memory.

Yeah, this method is not original to me, for sure.

Neither the "slow perfect practice" nor the "break down the skill" nor the "spaced repetition" is my invention.

Re: Ask HN: Do you have a process or a framework to learn specific skills quickly?

#102

Post by username90 »

nomy99 wrote: post #77
laichzeit0 wrote: post #9

For someone self-studying mathematics: Do the exercises. Especially the hard ones. Struggle for hours. Don’t worry about solution manuals. It should be painful.

This I think is the same thing as someone saying at the gym, don't stop until it hurts. People get injured and then never go to the gym again. How about look at the solution, understand the parts. Solve the problem. Revisit, revisit, revisit. This helped me breeze through engineering and also helped me professionally.

That is how people learn how to pass tests instead of learning the material. Passing tests is important in college, but if you want to learn on your own it doesn't matter.

Re: Ask HN: Do you have a process or a framework to learn specific skills quickly?

#103

Post by [deleted] »

username90 wrote: post #102
nomy99 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This I think is the same thing as someone saying at the gym, don't stop until it hurts. People get injured and then never go to the gym again. How about look at the solution, understand the parts. Solve the problem. Revisit, revisit, revisit. This helped me breeze through engineering and also helped me professionally.

That is how people learn how to pass tests instead of learning the material. Passing tests is important in college, but if you want to learn on your own it doesn't matter.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Do you have a process or a framework to learn specific skills quickly?

#104

Post by nomy99 »

username90 wrote: post #102
nomy99 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This I think is the same thing as someone saying at the gym, don't stop until it hurts. People get injured and then never go to the gym again. How about look at the solution, understand the parts. Solve the problem. Revisit, revisit, revisit. This helped me breeze through engineering and also helped me professionally.

That is how people learn how to pass tests instead of learning the material. Passing tests is important in college, but if you want to learn on your own it doesn't matter.

No. There are optimized paths to reach the same understanding

Re: Ask HN: Do you have a process or a framework to learn specific skills quickly?

#105

Post by username90 »

nomy99 wrote: post #104
username90 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is how people learn how to pass tests instead of learning the material. Passing tests is important in college, but if you want to learn on your own it doesn't matter.

No. There are optimized paths to reach the same understanding

Yes, but I'd argue that the path you took was a very suboptimal path to reach the same understanding since you almost surely didn't reach it. So now you'd have to redo almost everything in order to reach the same goal making it a very huge waste of time. Of course I cannot be sure of that, but I have seen so many people who learned the way you did and they had really poor understanding. In my experience only the people who try to challenge themselves actually gets there.

Passing math classes requires almost no understanding at all btw, even getting good grades in them doesn't.

Re: Ask HN: Do you have a process or a framework to learn specific skills quickly?

#106

Post by username90 »

mettamage wrote: post #35
caffeine wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is good advice. But for me, the hours’ struggle is more useful if not contiguous. I get the best results from struggling with a given problem for no more than 1 hour continuously, and then going away and coming back sometime after my next sleep. By struggling I mean “not making visible progress” - if progress is happening then just keep rolling.

This sounds like how I approach leetcode. Leetcode feels a bit like math to me anyways. Coding isn't the hard part, understanding the algorithm in conjunction with the data structures is.

Coding is the hard part if you are bad at coding but good at maths and algorithms. Writing accurate code for solving a hard problem in under 30 minutes requires you to be really good at coding.

Re: Ask HN: Do you have a process or a framework to learn specific skills quickly?

#107

Post by nomy99 »

username90 wrote: post #105
nomy99 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. There are optimized paths to reach the same understanding

Yes, but I'd argue that the path you took was a very suboptimal path to reach the same understanding since you almost surely didn't reach it. So now you'd have to redo almost everything in order to reach the same goal making it a very huge waste of time. Of course I cannot be sure of that, but I have seen so many people who learned the way you did and they had really poor understanding. In my experience only the peop…

No. You are over complicating things.

Re: Ask HN: Do you have a process or a framework to learn specific skills quickly?

#109

Post by mjos »

codechoir wrote: post #4

This is not a framework, but I see tremendous value in going to people who already know the skill first. At least in my experience, there's a tendency for people to start learning on their own before they feel comfortable asking questions. Often I try to skip this (rather tedious) process and go to someone who has knowledge in the area. Often I don't need an actual 'expert' but someone who's already intermediate. Ask…

I think this becomes even more valuable when having a family means that one's free time becomes an extremely scarce resource. One usually already has some experience to be able to ask the right questions to clarify generic concepts in given context. IMHO given both sides of the dialogue are on the same "wave" nothing can beat Socratic method.

Re: Ask HN: Do you have a process or a framework to learn specific skills quickly?

#110

Post by sach_r35 »

barelysapient wrote: post #94
glenngillen wrote: post #26

I’ve a few different approaches I take depending on the task (and if I’m honest, my mood or levels of motivation): - a new programming language, especially something closer to a systems language, I have a standard set of things I’ll try to implement. Read/write a file. Turn a structured object into JSON, parse JSON to an object. Basic script that can be run from CLI, parses flags/args, reads stdin. Send a HTTP reques…

I follow this pattern as well along with one caveat: I refuse to cut and paste code while learning. I require myself to retype any examples, stack overflows, and so on in the process of learning. Along the way, I get a handle on the patterns of the language. And if I'm learning in an IDE, the autocomplete suggestions start to hint at the other functions within libraries, etc.

Definitely. I feel like I force myself to ask the more fundamental questions relevant I am writing (i.e. why is it this way, alternatives, etc.) than if I were to cut-and-paste. Saw significant differences in learning new languages by forcing myself to do this.

And, my mentality in going through examples has changed. Larger blocks of code shouldn't seen as more of a pain to write, but larger sources of information (usually) for learning.

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