Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Writing about what you learn pushes you to understand topics better

addyosmani.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 167 posts

Re: Writing about what you learn pushes you to understand topics better

#91

Post by simonw »

winter_blue wrote: post #56
p4bl0 wrote: post #50

I remember an old PhD comics strip where a professor says “Remember kids, the only difference between fooling around and science is writing it down.”. In the context the goal was obviously for it to be funny but it is actually a very good and wise advice.

Wow, that's actually deeper than it sounds. I do wonder though: did a lot of famous scientists (like Einstein, Feynman, Turing, etc) use writing as a vehicle for learning?

See "inventor's notebook": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventor%27s_notebook - some good examples of famous notebook habits are linked to from there (Einstein and Tesla and Edison and da Vinci are all mentioned).

Re: Writing about what you learn pushes you to understand topics better

#94

Post by simonw »

codeulike wrote: post #5

But it takes ages

My experience is that the more I write, the faster I get at writing something that I feel is good enough to publish.

The great thing about self-publishing on the internet is that you can pick the quality you are comfortable with. No trees were harmed in the publication of this blog post!

Re: Writing about what you learn pushes you to understand topics better

#95

Post by scotty79 »

LanceH wrote: post #88

See one, do one, teach one is the mantra in medicine. In the military it was common to hear, "you don't know something until you can teach a class on it." So there was an expectation that everyone should be able to pass on the skills they are responsible for.

Not necessarily. To teach somthing you need to understand it very well. The core of it. The essence of it. When I studied I was helping others with the material. I felt how much that improved my understanding of it.

So they might have meant that you don't just need to be able to teach it. You'll understand it only after you've already taught it to someone.

Re: Writing about what you learn pushes you to understand topics better

#96

Post by throw1234651234 »

LanceH wrote: post #88

See one, do one, teach one is the mantra in medicine. In the military it was common to hear, "you don't know something until you can teach a class on it." So there was an expectation that everyone should be able to pass on the skills they are responsible for.

To add to what I said in another post - I have found this very difficult to apply to code. Military skills, while underestimated, virtually always have very, very clear steps. Perhaps this is also true of specialized medicine, though probably not outside of quickly troubleshooting certain conditions (stroke) or certain common procedures (clear airway). Basically, combat medicine.

In programming - good luck, literally everything you work with is new, all the time. I guess that's why FAANG tests on useless algos - it's at least something you can memorize and pretend it applies to everything.

Maybe I am just using excuses, but I have never used things I wrote articles on: RxJS, Angular Route Resolvers, Modern CI/CD, Web Components - all of these things either died or I used them once in my career and even the articles themselves are useless.

Re: Writing about what you learn pushes you to understand topics better

#97

Post by criddell »

sph wrote: post #13
dikei wrote: post #7

I've tried to create a tech blog for a long time. But because I'm quite OCD about my writing, it took ages to create a post. In the end, writing became such a chore that I stopped altogether.

Same. I want to limit myself to creating posts that are 2 or 3 paragraphs long, but I find that when I start, I expand and clarify so much it becomes another long post. I always need to have an entire free afternoon to write some prose.

Are you expanding and clarifying for yourself or for others?

Re: Writing about what you learn pushes you to understand topics better

#99

Post by chii »

westoque wrote: post #77

another similar concept i have found to be effective is to “teach what you learn”, i have noticed that it takes some good understanding of the topic you want to teach in order to communicate that effectively as well.

Not only a deeper understanding, but to retain the mental state of when you first didn't understand and be able to empathize that in your student's mind.

Some problem domains simply becomes so hard to teach, because once you learnt the domain, you tend to forget what made it confusing or hard, and thus unable to "teach" it to someone who hasn't understood it.

Post reply on HN