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The Benjamin Franklin method for learning more from programming books

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Re: The Benjamin Franklin method for learning more from programming books

#41

Post by wccrawford »

tw1010 wrote: post #34
__strisk wrote: post #25

Most programming books do not let you pause to reflect. They just go on and on. Consider Fluent Python by Luis Ramalho. If you read through the book, you will not get much out of it. However, if after each chapter, you try to come up with a practical application of the concepts discussed, then you will have a better chance at building a mental model around the topics. The code presented is just a solution to a proble…

I would say that's a problem with video (or a live lecture), not with a book. Books give you all the time in the world to pause and reflect.

Yeah, it's strange to me that a book should try to force a person to come up with their own activities. Perhaps they should suggest it strongly, but so should a good how-to-learn class, saving all that ink on all those pages from saying the same thing.

Re: The Benjamin Franklin method for learning more from programming books

#42

Post by demircancelebi »

I've been trying to help one of my friends learn basic coding skills, and the method we used was similar. First, there would be a problem we wanted to solve, I would walk through with him to the solution, and write the code as we speak. By the time we were done, I'd let him study the code for a bit, delete everything, and wanted him to rewrite it.

James Koppel (author of the blog) helped me saw the whole thing from another perspective, and I also loved that he has a high Signal-to-Noise ratio.

Re: The Benjamin Franklin method for learning more from programming books

#43

Post by wccrawford »

This is basically how I'd been telling people to learn from programming tutorial videos for years:

Do the exercise with the video. Do it again, only referencing the video when necessary. If you used the video a lot, do it a third time.

If it doesn't stick after a third time, it probably isn't going to without more tutorials, so go ahead and continue on. I'm betting most people get enough out of the second time, though, especially after doing this a few times and getting the hang of it.

And it's more or less what I've always done, though maybe not exactly following those steps.

Re: The Benjamin Franklin method for learning more from programming books

#44

Post by swah »

wccrawford wrote: post #43

This is basically how I'd been telling people to learn from programming tutorial videos for years: Do the exercise with the video. Do it again, only referencing the video when necessary. If you used the video a lot, do it a third time. If it doesn't stick after a third time, it probably isn't going to without more tutorials, so go ahead and continue on. I'm betting most people get enough out of the second time, thoug…

Reminds of the ole "Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect."

Re: The Benjamin Franklin method for learning more from programming books

#45

Post by f483 »

yesenadam wrote: post #19
yesenadam wrote: post #9

He doesn't really mention that the reason chess players and musicians can take more with each glance at a position/page is that they see in chunks, not individual elements - that comes from learning the patterns, e.g. in chess "short-castled white king with pawn on h3", in music "C7 chord with melody on the 7th" etc. It's just like adding more layers to a neural network, each layer building things from the elements o…

Q. Who are the great programmers, with inimitable or at least unmistakable and unique styles? Is there such a thing, as happens with music improvisers, composers, artists, writers?

Anything lynux https://www.ted.com/talks/linus_torvalds_the_mind_behind_lin...

Re: The Benjamin Franklin method for learning more from programming books

#46

Post by taneq »

zappo2938 wrote: post #20
dslama wrote: post #3

If you enjoyed the Franklin quote in this article, check out his autobiography. It is a gold mine of "life hacks", demonstrated via accounts of Franklin's remarkable life. It seems to be one of the original American self-help books :)

"I grew convinc'd that Truth, Sincerity and Integrity in Dealings between Man and Man, were of the utmost Importance to the Felicity of Life." I live my life according this. I've regretted many mistakes along the way. I have never regretted telling the truth. I might withhold the truth. I might knowingly let people assume things, but that is their own fault. I will not lie. The problem after reading this in high scho…

Technically I believe a philosopher is a lover of wisdom, rather than just truth. But I guess you could rightly argue that truth is a subset of wisdom... :)

Re: The Benjamin Franklin method for learning more from programming books

#49

Post by sus_007 »

" This is also why a smart code-completion tool can guess a long sequence of code from the first couple lines. With a better mental representation, understanding code is simply less work. "

=> Is the author protesting against the use of auto-completion/Intellisense feature of most of the modern IDEs ?

Re: The Benjamin Franklin method for learning more from programming books

#50

Post by pleasecalllater »

sus_007 wrote: post #49

" This is also why a smart code-completion tool can guess a long sequence of code from the first couple lines. With a better mental representation, understanding code is simply less work. " => Is the author protesting against the use of auto-completion/Intellisense feature of most of the modern IDEs ?

IMHO it's very good, and decreases the typing time ONLY if you understand the code, and you know what it's doing. Too often I have seen programmers with a strange approach: "I don't need to know, I don't need to think because I have my IDE".
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