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The Need to Read

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Need to Read

#61

Post by moffkalast »

kang wrote: post #51

If one learns to write by reading, one would learn to 'upload' by 'downloading'. The method of knowing is not dependent on the medium. I can present the steps in knowing to demonstrate it, but I have already made my point.

Yeah it seems weird to assume that it wouldn't be possible to 'write' that way. In fact it could possibly be far more powerful since you wouldn't be limited by words and language, but could write just about anything the human brain can experience. It's not like those download packages make themselves.

It's almost an 'old writer yells at cloud' type post.

Re: The Need to Read

#62

Post by raghavtoshniwal »

> Mysterious "tapes" would load it into one's brain like a program being loaded into a computer.

> That sort of thing is unlikely to happen anytime soon

Probably just my lived experience, but watching youtube at faster playback speed feels like downloading information. Increasing speeds at parts which I can easily grok and decreasing it when it takes time to understand the content.

Re: The Need to Read

#63

Post by sasha_fishter »

personjerry wrote: post #26

It's interesting that the article's thesis is about reading, but most of the article is actually about writing . And I think that's an understated point. I myself wrote a blog piece about "Blogging as Structured Thinking" earlier this year. I think that actually plenty of people do reading in various forms of content. The real challenge is getting people to do more writing. If you want to be a thinker, you have to wr…

Simon Willson explanation is actually really good. Thank you for sharing this!

Re: The Need to Read

#64

Post by barnacled »

This really chimes with me, I'm writing a book about the Linux memory management subsystem [0] and my primary motivation is to learn the subject more deeply and what Paul says here really aligns with my experience.

The effort to explain its machinery demands that I look very deeply - trying to answer questions like 'how does a page of memory get reclaimed?', or 'how does a userspace allocation propagate through the kernel?' - and following the white rabbit all the way down the burrow, forces a far deeper level of understanding than simply figuring something out for a patch.

(Obligatory plug!) For anybody who's interested in the topic, I plan to launch the book in a year or so, to be notified when it's released, sign up at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSen0gefOrPWi6ZtEQ25...

[0]:https://ljs.io/book.html

Re: The Need to Read

#65

Post by samsquire »

I would prefer to read other people's explanations of what the problems their code solves rather than the code to implement it.

Wikipedia is almost enough to implement a few algorithms that I've implemented from written descriptions (btrees, tries and multiversion concurrency control). But for other algorithms I just use the pseudocode such as for A*.

I would prefer that the English explanation was good enough to implement the code.

I journalled computer, software, parallelism, multithreading and futuristic software and architecture ideas out in the open since 2013. I am up to 700 entries. Writing is manifested thinking. Writing is very good for you. Links are in my profile.

Re: The Need to Read

#66

Post by jamager »

A visitor came to Richard Feynman's office. When he saw Fenyman's notebooks, he was excited to see records of Feynman's thinking. Feynman replied: They aren't a record of my thinking process. They are my thinking process.

Re: The Need to Read

#67

Post by synctext »

samsquire wrote: post #65

I would prefer to read other people's explanations of what the problems their code solves rather than the code to implement it. Wikipedia is almost enough to implement a few algorithms that I've implemented from written descriptions (btrees, tries and multiversion concurrency control). But for other algorithms I just use the pseudocode such as for A*. I would prefer that the English explanation was good enough to imp…

"Writing is Thinking"

  - my master thesis professor.

Re: The Need to Read

#70

Post by yourgranny »

Since this is a Paul Graham post, I'm gonna ask because it is the elephant in the room. Why has Hacker News been so quiet about Twitter? I think I know but I want my suspicions confirmed. I would prefer politics be kept out of Hacker News completely but the stories that don't appear seemingly lean in a single direction and it is turning me away now.
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