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How to build quickly

learnhowtolearn.org

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Re: How to build quickly

#111

Post by akudha »

idk1 wrote: post #83

What's interesting about this is, I have always done what the author describes and I just assumed when people wrote (for example) an essay, they would outline all the points and the structure first and then go and fill in each section and refine it over time. Same with ideas and projects, I would do rough outlines, then add fidelity. Same with programing, I'll make an outline and go and refine it all. It's strange, I…

I had a boss who was a very good programmer and a writer. He used to spend hours just writing the table of contents, hours. Once he is satisfied, he will finish writing the actual text very, very fast.

While he would write and rewrite ToC multiple times, he rarely edited the actual content, no matter how long it was.

I suppose different strategies work for different people

Re: How to build quickly

#112

Post by akudha »

lee wrote: post #27
teo_zero wrote: post #25

This is a good way to maximize speed. I'm not convinced it's also a good way to master quality. Rushing ("speedrunning") to a first working version may force you to choose sub-optimal paradigms (algorithms, data types, etc.) that you won't have the time or the will to correct later. I'd even postulate that's why we have so many crap applications today that are first on the market but slow, inefficient and user unfrie…

I think it's the opposite. I think quality often comes from evolution and iteration. There've been so many projects where I get stuck because I want to maximize quality, so I get writer's block. The worse, is that sometimes you'll try to perfect something on your project that ultimately isn't of great value. Building something quickly, and then iterating to perfect it seems to work for many people.

This is true for most things in life. People spend days and weeks on the logo, that the actual product doesn’t get off the ground. People spend so much time planning the perfect vacation, that it never happens. And so on.

Truth is, for most things in life, good enough is just good enough. Lots of things we do have a short shelf life anyways.

I guess deciding the right level of goodness (or perfectness) of the tasks/projects we do in life is a big skill in itself

Re: How to build quickly

#114

Post by lackoftactics »

I've been diving into the science of learning, and the blog author clearly knows their stuff. For those intrigued by this field, here are some fascinating concepts worth exploring:

Bloom's Taxonomy (absolute game-changer), Inquiry-Based Learning, Deep Cognitive Processing & Higher-Order Thinking (closely tied to Bloom's Taxonomy), Generation Effect & Testing Effect, Deliberate Practice, Interleaving, Metacognition, Cognitive Load Theory, Problem-Solving Techniques: First Principles Thinking, Second-Order Thinking, Socratic Questioning, 5 Whys, Inversion, Divide and Conquer

Each of these concepts can seriously level up your learning game. Happy googling/using llm!

Re: How to build quickly

#115

Post by mbforbes »

For me, this approach works great with one enormous exception: I must already know exactly what I'm going to write about.

I have tried outlining my writing countless times. But inevitably, the real work of thinking meticulously comes with the writing itself. In composing prose at the finest level of detail, I discover the true shape of the topic through its nuance.

I always throw out my outlines, no matter how many times I have iterated on them. My high level thinking couldn't sufficiently understand the topic.

PG expressed this well: writing is thinking, at least for some of us.

Re: How to build quickly

#116

Post by gizmo »

eaglefield wrote: post #104
gizmo wrote: post #96

This reads like a strategy for creating filler content. If you have to write a school essay an outline helps you churn through all the BS. By contrast, when you try to write something meaningful almost all effort goes into two things (a) figuring out what you actually have to say and (b) finding the right words to express it. School essays are written by people who don't have anything to say. Intro fluff. Chapter one…

I think that's an overly uncharitable read on this approach. Lots of tasks that have difficult thoughts, that need to be thought before they can be completed, also have phases in which work just has to be done. I'm in the middle of collaborating on an article for submission to a physics journal. I wouldn't term it filler work, but most of the complex thoughts on the problem have been thought through and the work righ…

It sounds like we are mostly in agreement, actually. Mathematicians don't start by creating an outline of a paper they have to write. They start by proving a theorem of some kind -- that's the part that involves thinking hard -- and only after they have something worth publishing does it make sense to think in terms of an outline. Proving the theorem take take a mathematician months (or a lifetime). Writing the paper takes an afternoon.

It's the same for software. By time time you understand the problem well enough that you can write down a list of things to be done you're already way past the "thinking hard" stage.

Sylvester Stallone wrote the script for rocky in 3 days. He could do this because he had already figured out the concepts, the theme, the characters and their personalities way ahead of time. He had worked on it in his head for years. By the time he started typing 90% of the work was already done. Nothing Stallone wrote later in his career was as good as his original rocky script.

Re: How to build quickly

#117

Post by passion__desire »

mbforbes wrote: post #115

For me, this approach works great with one enormous exception: I must already know exactly what I'm going to write about. I have tried outlining my writing countless times. But inevitably, the real work of thinking meticulously comes with the writing itself. In composing prose at the finest level of detail, I discover the true shape of the topic through its nuance. I always throw out my outlines, no matter how many t…

This is classic. Just move up and down the ladder of abstraction or a tree, collapse a node if its children are ok. If not, expand, fix issues, collapse it and move to another node in the tree or graph.

https://worrydream.com/LadderOfAbstraction/

Re: How to build quickly

#118

Post by brailsafe »

lackoftactics wrote: post #114

I've been diving into the science of learning, and the blog author clearly knows their stuff. For those intrigued by this field, here are some fascinating concepts worth exploring: Bloom's Taxonomy (absolute game-changer), Inquiry-Based Learning, Deep Cognitive Processing & Higher-Order Thinking (closely tied to Bloom's Taxonomy), Generation Effect & Testing Effect, Deliberate Practice, Interleaving, Metacognition, C…

Given the disaster that can be both google and llm, do you have any specific pieces of writing you found particularly high quality?
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