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Ask HN: How much do you study in order to do/make something?

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11–20 of 25 posts

Re: Ask HN: How much do you study in order to do/make something?

#11
> I find myself studying too much in order to make something that I want.

> I wonder whether this type of behavior is called anything so I could study about it.

Personally, I start building.

There are certain things you should plan out, but honestly: just start building. Move fast and break things. Make mistakes faster, learn faster, create faster.

Re: Ask HN: How much do you study in order to do/make something?

#12
post #11

> I find myself studying too much in order to make something that I want. > I wonder whether this type of behavior is called anything so I could study about it. Personally, I start building. There are certain things you should plan out, but honestly: just start building. Move fast and break things. Make mistakes faster, learn faster, create faster.

yes, start building. and see projects through to the end. it helps with the iterative process.

Re: Ask HN: How much do you study in order to do/make something?

#13
post #5

Exploration vs Exploitation in ML. It seems you explore a lot to find whats 'best', but it keeps you from implementing (in this case Exploiting) a set of ideas. There is an optimum between the two. You could read up on this. My 2 cents: Learn by need. Figure out your needs (e.g. required feature) and go get just that knowledge from the internet, and put it to practice.

I think this depends. You can (and should) learn things when you need them, but I have found that knowing about things before you need to use them greatly helps you when the rubber hit the roads.

Ideally I think it's a mix, where you always set some time aside (10-15%) to play and experiment with new / unknown things to sort of try to figure what they are/how they work. After that you'll form an opinion and be able to better pick thing to use when building something new and/or ramp up quickly in the learning by doing box because you've had some previous exposure.

YMMV

Re: Ask HN: How much do you study in order to do/make something?

#14
post #5

Exploration vs Exploitation in ML. It seems you explore a lot to find whats 'best', but it keeps you from implementing (in this case Exploiting) a set of ideas. There is an optimum between the two. You could read up on this. My 2 cents: Learn by need. Figure out your needs (e.g. required feature) and go get just that knowledge from the internet, and put it to practice.

I did try to do the way as you said in your 2 cents but the more I solve problems like that I tend to feel empty. It feels that I don't know anything and I just know some exceptions or just some solutions to some problems. I don't feel I have a fundamental knowledge base that lets me think from my own neural networks.

Break it up by time. As an example split... say you wanted to build a dashboard in a week. Use three days for research and four days for executing. Look up immediate blocking problems during your execution phase, but stay at a granular level.

Doing good research is a great quality though!

Re: Ask HN: How much do you study in order to do/make something?

#16

It depends on what I am doing. For almost 2 years I have had some art projects that involve doing something every day so that gets me learning gradually. I want to start blogging again though to write up what I've been doing and when I start setting up a 2022-technology blog system I find myself getting stuck in the weeds (this Hugo template example looks good but put some real text in there and there is just no room…

If I were in your situation I would be studying about all the static site generators, onpremise self-served blog services, any type of new blog service that are good for writing about art and math. Okay, then what theme would be best? Survey them on each platform. What markup language would be best to write about art and math? Find about LaTeX, org-mode, Markdown, etc. I pretty much tend to do this kind of thing for…

This sounds like you're doing everything in your power to avoid doing the actual thing.

Re: Ask HN: How much do you study in order to do/make something?

#17
Tongue Trainer is a merging of Jewish laws of ethical speech (from a book called Chofetz Chaim) and Tibetan Buddhist mind training called Lojong. It took me about a year and a half to practice and understand Lojong and about four months to learn the Jewish prohibitions and laws against lashon hara (evil speech).

Maybe that is a lot of study, but I enjoyed the journey and became a better person in the process of learning these two time-honored practices.

My advice to you? Enjoy the journey: https://tonguetrainer.com

Re: Ask HN: How much do you study in order to do/make something?

#18
It's interesting looking at the etymology of the word dashboard:

"board or leather apron in front of a carriage to stop mud from being splashed ('dashed') into the vehicle by the horse's hoofs"

And you can go back further to what "dash" and "board" even meant!

Like dash was "strike suddenly and violently" and board was "piece of timber sawn flat and thin, longer than it is wide, wider than it is thick".

I'm pretty much done doing or making things though.

Re: Ask HN: How much do you study in order to do/make something?

#19
post #2

Might call it analysis paralysis. You might also call it research. Consider putting your studies together as blog posts or videos so that your research becomes art in its own right. "Process is art".

Mighty thanks for clearing out on what problem I'm having! Do you have your own system for not getting into analysis paralysis?

Not a system, but a habit: when you've decided to do something, do it long before you feel ready. Probably shoot for feeling 2-5% ready to do anything new. "Bullets, then cannonballs".

Re: Ask HN: How much do you study in order to do/make something?

#20
post #11

> I find myself studying too much in order to make something that I want. > I wonder whether this type of behavior is called anything so I could study about it. Personally, I start building. There are certain things you should plan out, but honestly: just start building. Move fast and break things. Make mistakes faster, learn faster, create faster.

yes, start building. and see projects through to the end. it helps with the iterative process.

Yep. IME when I start making something, and then look into particulars when I'm unsure how to go on, the details become clearer and more useful. Moving between try and learn, each is reinforced.
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