81–90 of 154 posts
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Don't complain reflexively without looking at the submission. It's >95% text, the whole video transcript.
> Don't complain reflexively "Please add" is not a complaint, it's a polite request. The fact that there's also a video transcript just proves that the [video] label is accurate.
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That's of course deplorable. But it just feels to me that if it happens so regularly, there must be some systemic causes and not just instances of invidual educators being bribed
what other reason can there be for very, very bad authors have new editions of books come out every year and get enforced on students by tenured clowns?
When I studied Physics, I could sometimes take hours to digest a single page of a textbook or my lecture notes - providing that it was a good textbook. It’s not enough to just understand what is written. You have to understand why it is like described. Why it can’t be different - or could it? You need to build an intuition for both the physics and the math describing it. You have to push until it clicks. It’s hard wo…
On that topic... Does anyone have any clue how and why magnetism works? I have a A Level Physics test next week :)
Based on reader feedback, only a special kind of reader reads a programming book cover to cover. 90%+ people who read substantial parts of a programming book, dip into the parts that interest them after, perhaps, reading the first few chapters to figure out how to navigate the book.
Online, you have the freedom to do better and to publish similar material in multiple modes, from passive and linear, to self-paced interactive to human-guided. There isn't one answer, which the post touches on in several places including regarding spaced repetition.
LLMs are likely to have an impact on the value of pedagogical techniques like spaced repetition because spaced repetition is a tool for overcoming human impediments to acquiring and navigating huge, difficult, knowledge bases. Then using that knowledge requires enormous effort and aptitude. That's where humans competing with LLMs are like pick-and-shovel miners competing with a giant dragline at mining coal.
When I studied Physics, I could sometimes take hours to digest a single page of a textbook or my lecture notes - providing that it was a good textbook. It’s not enough to just understand what is written. You have to understand why it is like described. Why it can’t be different - or could it? You need to build an intuition for both the physics and the math describing it. You have to push until it clicks. It’s hard wo…
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> have been the standard for learning many topics for hundreds of years That means very little, history is littered with awful standards used for centuries, there is no magic that translates longevity into greatness > They have few technical problems Hard to bookmark (and find what those are for later), hard to search, hard to annotate (and search those later), hard to edit, hard to embed rich/dynamic content, hard t…
Well, books continue to work for a lot of people (including myself). Every time I read a book about a topic, I come away with deeper and more contextual knowledge than if I just piece together scraps of information from badly written blog posts and overly technical documentation - and that's only for programming stuff, for history etc. books tend to be even more valuable. > Hard to bookmark (and find what those are f…
> Not all of these are even true of physical books - people have been bookmarking them and scribbling in the margins for ages.
All of that is true for physical books, if you're limited to tiny margins and can't easily find your margin scribbles later, then it's a format fail, you just continue to use the same flawed logic "done for ages = good"
> And also, e-books and PDFs exist, for the people that prefer them.
Which mostly repeat the paper medium, so fail to solve most of those issues
> As for the "tailoring to a specific reader" and "tracking understanding", that's a problem for any learning resource, as people are incredibly varied.
Yet it's especially a problem with books
> In general, for a given topic one should check out different books
In general one should not limit oneself to books, even for just a starting point
> Books being hard to edit and/or collaborate on could maybe (if it's even true) be a problem for authors, but why does it matter for readers?
For example, to remove "sections that are obvious", add "exercises", find reference to "other sources", see explanations from other readers etc.
> there's no problem with supplementing a book with e.g. a website where you can find interactive visualisations, etc.
The problem is it's a big limitation of the format, and you can't integrate it well if you have to switch back and forth
> also: simply not every topic needs complex interactive visualisations
Which topic do you think can't benefit from one?
Books work well and have been the standard for learning many topics for hundreds of years. They have few technical problems, Easy to sell, borrow, give away. Yes, you can go about reading a book in different ways depending on what and why you are reading and what works for you. I think it is highly unfortunate that universities these days, at least in science, then to force students to buy a new edition every year, o…
> have been the standard for learning many topics for hundreds of years That means very little, history is littered with awful standards used for centuries, there is no magic that translates longevity into greatness > They have few technical problems Hard to bookmark (and find what those are for later), hard to search, hard to annotate (and search those later), hard to edit, hard to embed rich/dynamic content, hard t…
Some books come with one or two strings built in that can be used. Mostly to track where you are in the book right now, and the other one for something you find important.
Then there are thousands of different bookmarks you can buy as many as you need.
You also have adhesive-colored tabs you can use to mark whatever you like.
You can also bend the top or bottom corner of a page, Or use scissors and remove the corner entirely.
Bookmarking technology for real life books is mature and easy to use.
Some books make it easy to write down here you are externally. Page Numbers, or like the Bible with several numeric markings that makes finding a quote fast and easy.
Books can come with indexes that make finding things easier. To browse through index entries can also provide interesting insight.
It is super easy to annotate. You can use a pencil and things can be erased if you desire. You can use pens You can use highlighters, You can use stickers, You can write the margins You can attach post it notes You can attach documents (pressed between the existing pages.
The way you do bookmark, highlight, and scribble can be of tremendous value for the next reader. (Or it can be flat out annoying).
It is also easy these days to take a photo of a page with your cellphone and do whatever you want. then you can if you so wish print and glue it in, or insert a page or whatever into the book.
A book can have very rich illustrations and graphics.
If you do need to reference rich media you can print a QR code in the relevant part of the book so people can quickly pull up the video or whatever there is a need for.
Depends on the kind of book and subject matter. Dwarkesh is right about books you need to read all or nearly all of to get the benefit. But to answer "Do people care about understanding?" for a lot of books: No. The reader cares about their problems and solving them. Based on reader feedback, only a special kind of reader reads a programming book cover to cover. 90%+ people who read substantial parts of a programming…
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When learning new programming concepts, I would often have to learn them 5 or 10 times before they clicked. Once they clicked, they seemed completely obvious, and I couldn't imagine what it's like to not understand it. Two mathematicians are discussing a theorem. The first mathematician says that the theorem is trivial. He then proceeds with two hours of exposition. At the end of the explanation, the second mathemati…
I used to require this, but after having spent many years programming this stopped being the case. I've reached the point where i can see a new abstraction and usually immediatly understand it, regardless of language.
A C programmer with no experience in concatenative or, especially, functional languages will have little chance of understanding code written in Forth or Haskell. They will have to start at the bottom of the learning curve.
The differences between languages aren't just skin-deep. Same goes for the design patterns in those languages. Haskell's applicatives have no analog in C, for instance.
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> Don't complain reflexively "Please add" is not a complaint, it's a polite request. The fact that there's also a video transcript just proves that the [video] label is accurate.
You're wrong. [video] is only an (unnecessary) warning for people who don't like videos. If most of the page is text there is no reason at all to "warn" anyone.