You've Probably Read Enough • Hacker News Board

Re: You've Probably Read Enough

#21

Post by keeperofdakeys » Wed, Dec 07, 2011, 10:54 PM UTC

jcr wrote: post #6

Though 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 find the articles interesting, that is enough for me to justify reading HN. When I compare HN to the front page of reddit, which I used to read, I feel a lot better about reading HN.

I would also claim you want to 'relax' during breaks, that is, not actively think about something. I can't think of many better activities then reading HN.

Re: You've Probably Read Enough

#22

Post by borism » Wed, Dec 07, 2011, 10:54 PM UTC

_delirium wrote: post #16

jcr wrote: post #6

Though 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…

It's hard to say for sure, but I find the difference between "cold" recall and latent recall of facts to be pretty large. Happens most frequently with stuff I learned on Wikipedia: I'll end up in a conversation, find myself knowing a fact that I shouldn't really have known given my background, and then realized that I must've gotten it from Wikipedia. Sometimes after that I can mentally recreate the browsing path I m…

it's called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associative_memory (yeah, there's plenty of links spanning from that article, I know)

I think there's a whole cult that promotes learning all kinds of things by remembering by association, can't remember what it was called. My father was introduced to it when he tried to learn a new language, but it failed miserably at that (not all tools are suitable for everything).

Anyway, another good technique to recall something is to think about something else for a moment and not concentrate on a particular thing you can't recall at that moment too much.

Re: You've Probably Read Enough

#23

Post by pnathan » Wed, Dec 07, 2011, 10:55 PM UTC

Depends on the subject, there's an asymptotic dropoff in usefulness as you become more and more read in it.

Re: You've Probably Read Enough

#24

Post by synnik » Wed, Dec 07, 2011, 10:58 PM UTC

jcr wrote: post #6

Though 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 don't see a serious problem with a low retention rate from reading HN articles. I do not come here to memorize every item that flies through... I probably read 50 items a week on HN, but the reason I come back is for the 2-3 items per week that make me re-evaluate what I am doing, and cause me to do it better.

Re: You've Probably Read Enough

#25

Post by jcr » Wed, Dec 07, 2011, 11:01 PM UTC

joeyespo wrote: post #20

jcr wrote: post #6

Though 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've had a similar observation with all of my RSS feeds. Afterward, I dropped about 80% of them. And wow did that feel good! Strange how it becomes a weight after a while. I also reduced my HN reading to just a few top posts a day. What keeps me coming back to HN is my ongoing curiosity of how technology is evolving. (And also a slight paranoia of another hacker publishing exactly one of my side projects before I do…

An over-loaded RSS feed, or being subscribed to too many mailing lists has an effect similar to what PG is talking about in his "stuff" essay.

http://www.paulgraham.com/stuff.html

Re: You've Probably Read Enough

#26

Post by mhartl » Wed, Dec 07, 2011, 11:03 PM UTC

I advocate a spiral method: learn until you have a basic grasp, then do until you hit a wall, then learn some more. Don't shirk the learning, though, or anyone who has done it will see right through you. For example, when I started typesetting with LaTeX, I started by reading (and finishing) a full LaTeX tutorial. Most people just grab a sample document and dive in, and I can tell you that their markup sucks. It's painful to read, and difficult to extend or maintain—and it's often ugly to boot. The difference between

    x$_{spring} = A sin(\omega t)$

and

    $x_\mathrm{spring} = A \sin(\omega t)$

is qualitative and unmistakable.

If you care about making things, there's no substitute for doing. If you care about quality, there's no substitute for learning from the experts who have gone before you.

Re: You've Probably Read Enough

#27

Post by eric-hu » Wed, Dec 07, 2011, 11:03 PM UTC

_delirium wrote: post #10

It 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?

Re: You've Probably Read Enough

#28

Post by dbtc » Wed, Dec 07, 2011, 11:07 PM UTC

gxs wrote: post #5

Interestingly enough, this was the same approach that worked for me in school. In college, I always felt that I couldn't start my math homework until I'd read the chapter thoroughly. It wasn't til my last year/year and a half that I realized, the best way to learn upper division math was to dive right into solving the hard problems, referencing back as needed.

This is what I have done since high school, but only because I never gave myself enough time to review the chapter before having to rush through the homework.

Sometimes I wondered if I would have done better having given myself more time to study the materials.

Re: You've Probably Read Enough

#29

Post by Mediocrity » Wed, Dec 07, 2011, 11:09 PM UTC

ofca wrote: post #13

Exactly > take the red pill! :) there is too much ambiguation. People spend months,years even, daydreaming. Fuck that childish nonsense. I am learning JS atm and loving myself for actually doing something. It is hard as hell but at least I'm moving forward, instead of being trapped in a dream.

"People spend months,years even, daydreaming."

Raises his hand

And the damned truth is, I know I'll probably fail because of it.

Not that that helps.

Re: You've Probably Read Enough

#30

Post by davesims » Wed, Dec 07, 2011, 11:17 PM UTC

Unless you haven't. Hands-on is very important, especially early on when learning something new. But after the early stages, hands-on only takes you so far. You need to hit the books again.

You'll learn more starting out in Rails, for instance, by getting the basics of controller actions and their relationships to views and then immediately code some stuff. After that you can code till you're blue in the face but you still won't know nothin' bout polymorphic relationships or has_many :through. For that, you need to read some more.

I found over the years I need to have a steady cycle of practical coding, reading, coding, reading. It just depends. If I'm in the heat of getting features out the door, I don't read at all usually, I'm just doing what I do. When things settle down for a bit, I pull out something to read that pushes my weak areas. Maybe algorithms, or TCP/IP stuff I've neglected, or going over stuff I knew at one point but lost out of my wee lil noggin.

That said, when I'm reading that stuff I'll usually have a terminal open where I can practice, either in the shell, repl, mysql terminal, etc. So the cycles of reading/coding can be get real short. That's when I get the most into my brain, actually -- long sessions of doing both together.