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How to learn hard things in tech

technicallychallenged.substack.com

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Re: How to learn hard things in tech

#11

Post by phforms »

I am also self-taught and mostly learn by the same process described in the article. Playing around with small, isolated experiments and observing the behaviour of the system is essential to how I understand new things.

But I would like to add that getting a high-level overview also helps me to gain a clearer and better integrated, more contextual understanding. This is especially important when I learn “hard” things (although this is a very relative term), since usually those things have a lot of unknown unknowns that often reveal themselves in this process.

That is why I like watching talks about the subject, reading articles and opinions, etc. which are more related to the conceptual stuff and the thought processes behind it. Usually I will then build a concept map and connect things I know that relate to the subject (I like using a PKM tool like TheBrain for this).

Re: How to learn hard things in tech

#12

Post by jacquesm »

dodyg wrote: post #3

>Start with the smallest working example —it doesn’t matter where this comes from, it could be a website, blog, the documentation for the technology, a friend or coworker, it could be from anywhere. This is your basic working example. It’s the baseline for building further knowledge. This is the main idea behind over 400+ micro samples I created for ASP.NET Core https://github.com/dodyg/practical-aspnetcore

That's a fantastic piece of work.

Re: How to learn hard things in tech

#13

Post by xupybd »

I'm trying to learn category theory. It's not the kind of thing you can learn the way this article suggests. I find learning new abstractions rather difficult especially at the level of category theory. If anyone has any tips I'd love to hear them.

Re: How to learn hard things in tech

#14

Post by omega3 »

When I encounter something new and hard I try to find a conference presentation around this topic. I'm guessing public speaking in a time constrained format really forces speakers to prepare well and provides the best time/information balance. Even better if there are questions from the audience that dig deeper into the why questions.

Re: How to learn hard things in tech

#16

Post by kebsup »

A few times when I was working with a new technology in a project, I've found it extremely useful to set it up in a completely clean project, learn everything and proceed from there. I have seen people who tried to read the docs and jump straight into implementing stuff in the existing code base struggle with the basics.

Re: How to learn hard things in tech

#17

Post by Jensson »

xupybd wrote: post #13

I'm trying to learn category theory. It's not the kind of thing you can learn the way this article suggests. I find learning new abstractions rather difficult especially at the level of category theory. If anyone has any tips I'd love to hear them.

Have you studied abstract algebra first? Category theory is an abstraction level above abstract algebra, so the normal way to learn it is to first get a solid foundation in abstract algebra.

Re: How to learn hard things in tech

#18

Post by xupybd »

Jensson wrote: post #17
xupybd wrote: post #13

I'm trying to learn category theory. It's not the kind of thing you can learn the way this article suggests. I find learning new abstractions rather difficult especially at the level of category theory. If anyone has any tips I'd love to hear them.

Have you studied abstract algebra first? Category theory is an abstraction level above abstract algebra, so the normal way to learn it is to first get a solid foundation in abstract algebra.

I have not. Thank you I'll start learning that first.

Re: How to learn hard things in tech

#19

Post by xudong963 »

livinglist wrote: post #5
lordnacho wrote: post #4

IME the hard thing is not something that there's accessible examples for. If there's a tutorial or an example project, you'll figure it out eventually. The thing that's hard is something like how to make a project maintainable. You have to have the experience of screwing it up over a long period of time, feeling the pain each time there's a bug to find or a new feature to implement. You won't find a tutorial in how t…

Can’t agree more! It was until I started my first full time job when I realized how ugly and disorganized my code was… I stopped maintaining one app of mine which I really like and still take pride in only because the codebase was a disaster…

Maybe you should continue to maintain the codebase and make it elegent, then you'll learn more.

Re: How to learn hard things in tech

#20

Post by 363849473754 »

xupybd wrote: post #13

I'm trying to learn category theory. It's not the kind of thing you can learn the way this article suggests. I find learning new abstractions rather difficult especially at the level of category theory. If anyone has any tips I'd love to hear them.

As Jensson recommended I would learn abstract algebra first to understand concrete examples in category theory.

If abstracts algebra is too difficult then learn introduction to proofs before continuing with abstract algebra.

Try doing problems and posting them online to have them checked. Currently you can use discord, reddit, math stack exchange etc

Don’t worry about rushing it. Everything builds on itself. For instance once you rigorously study introduction to proofs you’ll see the same sort of proofs again when you begin studying abstract algebra and will already be familiar with the concepts.

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