There was an HN poster a few months ago who claimed that memorizing the Python standard library made him much more productive.
Probably because it's so hard to find stuff in the docs!
In Praise of Memorization
21–30 of 152 posts
Re: In Praise of Memorization
#22I've never regarded memorization highly. Whenever we had to learn the times tables or the squares at school, I would just work them out in my head instead of memorizing them. Of course, I still ended up learning the squares and the times tables by heart, but not because I actively memorized them, but because I just used them so much that I couldn't help but remember them eventually. I'm of the opinion that this leads…
> I've never regarded memorization highly
You were probably taught that memorization means "memorization, plus you will be examined and punished and rewarded accordingly, in many cases against any natural inclination to memorize the object of conditioning".
I doesn't, but you're right to not regard this highly.
> never memorize anything - if you use the thing often enough
You'll memorize it, yes.
Re: In Praise of Memorization
#23I memorized half of If when I was younger. It seemed especially impressive to certain people. These days I combine mnemonics with memory palace journeys. In a few hours of practice I went from being able to memorize 6 digits to around 70. My penultimate challenge is to memorize texts verbatim. I haven't been able to find a straightforward method. My next thought is to research theater performers' methods and Hafiz me…
Memorize blank verse, aim for a stanza a day. There's loads of it, and you can be that guy who spouts just a bit too much Shakespeare at parties.
It's closer to prose, but the meter makes it harder to swap words out, and teaches you that words aren't fungible in memorizing a text (as opposed to learning from it, which is most of what we do with texts).
Re: In Praise of Memorization
#24Memorization might be a part of it, but imho the important part is (emphasis mine):
> So they ended up reading *reference manuals* and writing down or memorizing the answers to their questions because they couldn't look up information very easily.
Good reference manuals are dope and they're so much better than tutorials or FAQ like stackoverflow because they are written to be general, you don't have to generalize yourself (which usually isn't trivial). You're almost never reading about a particular problem but about a class of problems, not about a technic but about a class of technics. In freshman we learnt ocaml (actually caml light, yeah you guessed i'm french) and we were all handed a text copy of https://caml.inria.fr/pub/distrib/caml-light-0.74/cl74refman.... To this day i still love reference books, usually when i have a problem i look it up, get my answer, and then end up reading the whole chapter or so giving much more background knowledge.
Re: In Praise of Memorization
#25I've never regarded memorization highly. Whenever we had to learn the times tables or the squares at school, I would just work them out in my head instead of memorizing them. Of course, I still ended up learning the squares and the times tables by heart, but not because I actively memorized them, but because I just used them so much that I couldn't help but remember them eventually. I'm of the opinion that this leads…
>I'm of the opinion that this leads to a good rule of thumb: never memorize anything Did you ever learn another language? It's impossible without memorizing a massive amount of things, especially when the writing system is different than the one one is familiar with. In fact the most famous researcher in vocabulary learning (Paul Nation) states in one of his book that rote learning is one of the most efficient use of…
I can't speak for the GP, but my personal experience is also that I really dislike memorization. That being said, I speak 5 languages, have written books in two of them, have given public presentation in three and can introduce myself and go and buy bread in a few more.
That's in addition to computer languages, of course :)
I suspect that the parts of the brain involving in learning by rote and learning a new language are somewhat different. When I learn a new language, I'm desperately trying to connect anything I see to something I already know. When I learn a multiplication table or a list of unrelated dates, it doesn't work nearly as well.
Re: In Praise of Memorization
#26Understanding that memorization should be key for the reasons laid out in the article, would it be better to forgo note centered workflows such as Zettelkasten or Wiki for flashcard centered workflows such as Anki or Supermemo? What gives the most value?
I'm going back and forth between these two workflows and I feel like progressing at a steady rate before getting bogged down, not because I have difficulty with the subjects I study per se, but because every month or so there is an article confuting the previous one, prompting me to switch to the other workflow, slowing me down considerably, every single time.
Re: In Praise of Memorization
#27I've never regarded memorization highly. Whenever we had to learn the times tables or the squares at school, I would just work them out in my head instead of memorizing them. Of course, I still ended up learning the squares and the times tables by heart, but not because I actively memorized them, but because I just used them so much that I couldn't help but remember them eventually. I'm of the opinion that this leads…
> Whenever we had to learn the times tables or the squares at school, I would just work them out in my head instead of memorizing them.
I took a slightly different approach: memorize what is important.
For some reason, they wanted us to memorize the times table up to 12 when I was a kid. I quickly recognized that it was only important to memorize it up to 9, and even then there were patterns. Why is 9 more important than 12? Because it is incredibly inefficient to figure out a product each time you need it, but the rules for multi-digit multiplication were generals whereas the rules for single-digit multiplication only worked for single digit (and were necessary for multi-digit multiplication anyway). The trick is to figure out when the efficiency outweighs inefficiency.
Re: In Praise of Memorization
#28Very much in agreement with the article. The analysis about the current Ukrainian situation is a little bit limited, though, because Russia controls Sevastopol since it annexed Crimea in 2014; it didn't need the current war to control it more.
Also, probable typo:
> A second example: at the time of the writing of this article, Russia is a month into an invitation into Ukraine.
invitation => invasion? I don't think anyone invited Russia in Ukraine.
Re: In Praise of Memorization
#29I've worked with devs who never looked up anything on the internet and tried to do everything from memory and their code was shit. I think here it may have been something else that made this team highly productive.
Maybe they had more autonomy than most dev teams are allowed to have. I know I would have never been allowed to create a compiler for any of my previous jobs (to high risk).
I do agree you shouldn't just Google every problem you have.
Re: In Praise of Memorization
#30I've never regarded memorization highly. Whenever we had to learn the times tables or the squares at school, I would just work them out in my head instead of memorizing them. Of course, I still ended up learning the squares and the times tables by heart, but not because I actively memorized them, but because I just used them so much that I couldn't help but remember them eventually. I'm of the opinion that this leads…
>I'm of the opinion that this leads to a good rule of thumb: never memorize anything Did you ever learn another language? It's impossible without memorizing a massive amount of things, especially when the writing system is different than the one one is familiar with. In fact the most famous researcher in vocabulary learning (Paul Nation) states in one of his book that rote learning is one of the most efficient use of…
Curious, I've learned English to a nearly native level without memorizing a single word.