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I was too smart for the pace of learning at my public junior and high school (not too smart for college, but that's another story), and regularly either doodled

I was too smart for the pace of learning at my public junior and high school (not too smart for college, but that's another story), and regularly either doodled, wrote stories or poetry, or programmed simple text-based games in TI-BASIC on my calculator in order to get through my classes, while looking up periodically to make sure I was still following everything they said. And this was during the 1990's that I was in junior/high school. I graduated with almost a perfect GPA too, so at least in my case, yeah, I could code and learn at the same time. I still can for some coding tasks professionally, but not for all. I'll have podcasts or Netflix while programming sometimes. When I really have to concentrate, though, yeah that's when the lyricless music gets put on.

IkmoIkmo 11y ago
No you didn't do it at the same time. You did learning at a higher pace than the average pace (which is the pace at which the teacher will cover material), and then did not learn for the remainder of the time. That's completely different from doing things simultaneously, i.e. at the same time.
- cableshaft 11y ago
  In some cases that was definitely true, perhaps most cases, but there were several times when I was being taught brand new material and was coding while I was listening to the teacher. In math class especially there was almost never a moment when I wasn't doing some form of programming during the class, since I could get away with having my calculator out the whole time. This was TI-BASIC, though. I mean, it didn't get much more complicated than "PRINT", "INPUT", "IF THEN ELSE", "FOR", and "GOTO LABEL". I wasn't trying to figure out how to integrate a horribly documented third party API or anything.
CyberDildonics 11y ago
That's just you being ahead of the curve. Distractions mean you aren't at your best either way.
- cableshaft 11y ago
  That's kind of my point. I didn't need to be "at my best" at those times. When I really need to figure something out at work, I do my best to eliminate distractions as much as possible so I can be "at my best" (I work in an open office). But even that's not needed 100% of the time. Sometimes you're just doing grunt work that needs to get done, sometimes you're doing something you've done thirty times before. But sometimes you're figuring out one of the trickiest interlocking puzzle you've ever come across, and that's when I need to be at my best.

IkmoIkmo 11y ago

No you didn't do it at the same time. You did learning at a higher pace than the average pace (which is the pace at which the teacher will cover material), and then did not learn for the remainder of the time. That's completely different from doing things simultaneously, i.e. at the same time.

cableshaft 11y ago
In some cases that was definitely true, perhaps most cases, but there were several times when I was being taught brand new material and was coding while I was listening to the teacher. In math class especially there was almost never a moment when I wasn't doing some form of programming during the class, since I could get away with having my calculator out the whole time. This was TI-BASIC, though. I mean, it didn't get much more complicated than "PRINT", "INPUT", "IF THEN ELSE", "FOR", and "GOTO LABEL". I wasn't trying to figure out how to integrate a horribly documented third party API or anything.

CyberDildonics 11y ago

That's just you being ahead of the curve. Distractions mean you aren't at your best either way.

cableshaft 11y ago
That's kind of my point. I didn't need to be "at my best" at those times. When I really need to figure something out at work, I do my best to eliminate distractions as much as possible so I can be "at my best" (I work in an open office). But even that's not needed 100% of the time. Sometimes you're just doing grunt work that needs to get done, sometimes you're doing something you've done thirty times before. But sometimes you're figuring out one of the trickiest interlocking puzzle you've ever come across, and that's when I need to be at my best.