I'm illiterate though.
You've Probably Read Enough
51–60 of 78 posts
Re: You've Probably Read Enough
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
If mastering English is your goal, then reading == doing
If mastering English is your goal, then doing includes conversing. I know a lot of children of immigrants who can understand their parents' language, but can't converse in it.
Where does one converse in English while in a foreign country? I basically taught myself English using the Internet and even though my understanding is top-notch due to copious amounts of reading & watching TV shows, my speech & active vocab are severely underdeveloped.
Re: You've Probably Read Enough
#53i have a huge problem with this, between HN, /r/programming, /r/netsec, /r/technology, fastcompany, I find myself not really "doing" that much with programming as a hobby. I studied computer science in college, and for the last 3 years have been working in the military outside the field, but my passion still lies with computer science. Unfortunately these days it seems I mostely read into the success of others.
I guess a lot of it was getting burned out on tutorials, I have a hard time completing them, because the thrill of programming for me lies in solving a new problem, not typing in someone else code. It has been hard for me to pick up rails even with the excellent rails tutorial just because I dont find it all that exciting to type in verbatum code. Anyone have any good suggestions for learning new languages?
I think that just starting small scope projects and adding to them incrementaly with some good ref materials might be the solution.
Re: You've Probably Read Enough
#54[deleted]
Re: You've Probably Read Enough
#55> What is reading one more article going to do? Probably nothing.
Reading articles after articles instead of doing things is a very common form of procrastination. From Wikipedia: "procrastination refers to the act of replacing high-priority actions with tasks of low-priority".
To fight this plague I'm working on an anti-procrastination web community for startup founders and people working on side projects: asaclock™ (http://www.asaclock.com).
Re: You've Probably Read Enough
#56It depends strongly on the subject, I find. Sometimes this advice is right; sometimes it's very far off. I've made both mistakes, and it's hard to predict which is which. Sometimes you read forever when you should've just done something months ago. But other times you waste a lot of time badly reinventing a wheel and getting saddled with bad design decisions that should've been avoidable, because you didn't realize t…
To add onto this: when you do benefit from pre-researching sufficiently, you may think it was necessary only for that situation. We only need to wear seatbelts on the days we'll get into an accident, right?
I have this fear literally every time I start on a new problem: am I re-inventing the wheel? Has this problem been solved already - maybe written about and discussed at length about in some paper/textbook/blog I haven't read? The more I learn the more I realize I don't know, which seems only increases my anxiety level. So that's one reason I can't stop reading this stuff.
Re: You've Probably Read Enough
#57I find people who 'do' and don't 'read' annoying. They tend not to understand their current cultural and mathematical context and end up re-inventing the wheel in their products.
These are the guys who tweet about 'this cool new language, Lisp' and talk about basic CS algorithms as if they were breaking news, discoveries that will disrupt the industry.
That said, at the end of the day, yes: doing is great for understanding.
Re: You've Probably Read Enough
#58This is the reason I like hanging out at HN, finding people like me with similar problems. Glad that I am not alone trying to deal with this as well.
Re: You've Probably Read Enough
#59[deleted]
Re: You've Probably Read Enough
#60Though the time I spend here on HN is both enjoyable and educational, a few months ago I ran an interesting test. For each article I read, I wrote down a one line entry on a piece of paper noting the site and basic gist of the article. The next day, before I was "allowed" to read any more articles on HN, I sat down with the blank side of said piece of paper from yesterday, and wrote down the articles I remembered. I…
I sure hope you can't remember everything you read on HN. That would be like remembering everything that your roommate ever said to you during four years of college.
There's room in life for casual conversation. It doesn't have to be relentless study all the time. And even if you're intent on only reading stuff worth memorizing you can't achieve that goal. You can fight Sturgeon's Law, but you can't always expect to win.