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You've Probably Read Enough

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Re: You've Probably Read Enough

#41

Post by tcarney »

Tsagadai wrote: post #40

You probably haven't read enough. It really depends on your goals and what you are trying to learn (or whether you are trying to learn at all). Doing is great and it's how you get things done but not everything can be learnt in a few short articles. It also depends on what you are reading too. Reading within a narrow field or an echo chamber can only take you so far. Reading and discovering new ideas can completely t…

If mastering English is your goal, then reading == doing

Re: You've Probably Read Enough

#43

Post by hrabago »

tcarney wrote: post #41
Tsagadai wrote: post #40

You probably haven't read enough. It really depends on your goals and what you are trying to learn (or whether you are trying to learn at all). Doing is great and it's how you get things done but not everything can be learnt in a few short articles. It also depends on what you are reading too. Reading within a narrow field or an echo chamber can only take you so far. Reading and discovering new ideas can completely t…

If mastering English is your goal, then reading == doing

If mastering English is your goal, then doing includes conversing. I know a lot of children of immigrants who can understand their parents' language, but can't converse in it.

Re: You've Probably Read Enough

#44

Post by billpatrianakos »

I think this is true in phases. When you barely know something, readin can help a lot. Then you do it, get it, and reading about the same things does nothing. Once you move up the ladder so to speak you can once again gain a lot from reading. It's only once you've really mastered something that reading no longer helps and you end up just repeating the same articles over and over.

Re: You've Probably Read Enough

#45

Post by austenallred »

While it's true that reading one article, be it on HN or TC or wherever else, won't make a huge difference, what makes a difference is the aggregate of gleaning what information you can over a long period of time. Much like most (real) classes, you can't really cram, but as you continually ingest information it becomes a part of you.

Coming from the business end of things before I started programming, I learned about IPOs not from business classes but from reading about which companies would IPO. I learned about vesting schedules and cap sheets by reading about people discussing these things. While it's taken years for me to feel like I understands most of the ins and outs, it's also something that you really should be learning second hand. You don't want to be talking to a potential investor and have to ask him what a cap sheet is.

It's not about, "I will read this and understand," it's about immersing yourself in the culture and picking things up as you go.

Re: You've Probably Read Enough

#47

Post by billpatrianakos »

_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…

Very true. I like this comment the best so far. There is sometimes that point where you feel like you got it and proceed with the just doing part and then you suddenly realize you should have read much more but only once it's too late. I recently tried to get a web app up and running on a VPS and I read a Tom about preparing, bootstrapping, configuring, and all about which stack components I should choose. In the end it wasn't enough and now I have to go back, totally reset the VPS to a clean slate and do it over. I went ahead and just did it after thinking reading could no longer help but I found an interesting thing. In some areas of what I was trying to do, it really was time to just do. I then got experienced with a few tools and learned that only then would further reading about how to better use those tools actually help. So it was sort of like "read, do, come back and read again".

Re: You've Probably Read Enough

#48

Post by saturdaysaint »

There's a profound difference between having "read enough" insightful books and/or lengthy articles on a subject and having "read enough" Youtube videos and blurby articles on a subject. With the former, a few days of deep reading can yield insights and techniques that months of unskilled "jumping into it" wouldn't have revealed. With the latter, yeah, you'll face diminishing returns pretty quickly.

Re: You've Probably Read Enough

#49

Post by saraid216 »

Tsagadai wrote: post #40

You probably haven't read enough. It really depends on your goals and what you are trying to learn (or whether you are trying to learn at all). Doing is great and it's how you get things done but not everything can be learnt in a few short articles. It also depends on what you are reading too. Reading within a narrow field or an echo chamber can only take you so far. Reading and discovering new ideas can completely t…

I'm curious what constitutes mastery in English for you.

Re: You've Probably Read Enough

#50

Post by wavetossed »

But reading is good for reminders. Go ahead, read a couple of books on a topic and then try to "do". You will soon be knee deep in alligators and unable to remember everything that you absorbed in those two "great books". The solution is to read everyday and let it remind you, directly or indirectly, of the great stuff that you studied but have nearly forgotten because you haven't put it into practice.
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