4 ms·

If you're reading books for the details, you're doing it wrong. Read books for ideas. You can always look at the book for reference when you forget the details

by nxc18 9y ago

If you're reading books for the details, you're doing it wrong. Read books for ideas. You can always look at the book for reference when you forget the details. I despair for the people who are taught that learning is about memorizing facts. Ideas are far more powerful than facts and a heck of a lot harder to lookup.

kiba 9y ago
Learning is certainly about memorizing, whether that's facts or ideas or skills.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dwaltrip 9y ago
  Learning is about changing the way we think and perceive. This is not best done through memorization. Facts are important, however I would argue that the different conceptualizations of ideas and the relationships between them are far more important.
  - kiba 9y ago
    My mistake in using memorization in a different sense. Let me clarify; memory is intrinsic to learning. Everything we ever know is based on remembering things. If you mean rote memorization, to repeat something over and over again until you remember it but not necessary understand, then that is only one strategy for learning. It works but it is rather inefficient and may cause one to miss things. Similarly, we cannot overemphasize learning concepts over practice and facts. A programmer do not look up syntax unless one is learning a new language. An even better example; quick bugfixing required a deep knowledge of the codebase, lot of experience with tons of different bugs and knowledge of debugging strategies. To me, it seems wrong to separate facts from the concepts, and skills from intellectual knowledge.
    - nxc18 9y ago
      If you really need to know a fact, you will naturally memorize it in the course of your work. In reality, the amount of syntax to memorize in your programming language is tiny; there are probably several keywords you don't know particularly well that don't impact your day to day. Further, almost all common languages share huge amounts of their syntax and much of the semantics of their constructs. Many chemistry classes require students to memorize the periodic table up front. This is a mistake; by doing chemistry work, you naturally learn the table, and, crucially, the patterns involved. Contrast this to how I was taught multiplication: memorize this table. As a result, I was both bad at multiplication for a long time as a child, and I missed out on the beauty of mathematical patterns for a long time. It turns out multiplication is actually useful, so now I could produce a times table - not from memory, but from scratch from the concept. I see far too often students who try to memorize the code for an algorithm - or even just the algorithm - without the concept itself. This is useless, it leads to frustration, and it fucks you when it's time to rewrite it in another language or add a twist. Seriously, do yourself a favor and stop memorizing things. Do things, and if it turns out you remember it, then that's how you know its worth memorizing.
      - oblio 9y ago
        > If you really need to know a fact, you will naturally memorize it in the course of your work. And then there's programming interviews for big companies, where they all want me to know minute details of things I'be never encountered in my day job, that I studied years ago in college, and that I will probably not need for my actual job (90% sure about this, seeing most products released by the big companies).
        nxc18 9y ago
        That's a good point. I very fortunately left interview mode a few months ago, and have pretty deliberately blocked that part of my life out. As you might have guessed, I'm not great at it. You could argue that the fact that memorization is helpful illustrates how flawed those programming interviews are. It's just like any test in school, memorizing things for a short time before the test is effective, but it doesn't really help you in the long run. Good luck with your interviews :)
  - coldtea 9y ago
    >Learning is about changing the way we think and perceive. This is not best done through memorization. Unless it has left a permanent mark in our memory, there's no "changing in the way we think and perceive".
    - dwaltrip 9y ago
      Sure, but this line of argument waters down the term "memorization" to something unrecognizable.
    - kazinator 9y ago
      Very next sentence after the quoted material begins with "Facts ..."; i.e. the comment is about the memorization of facts specifically (perhaps the same thing we call "rote learning"), not about "memorization" being any kind of enduring state change in the memory.
teh_klev 9y ago
> Read books for ideas. You can always look at the book for reference when you forget the details. This I agree with. Make marginal notes for some specific notable detail you think might be useful to recall in the future.
BeetleB 9y ago
>If you're reading books for the details, you're doing it wrong. Blanket statements like that will get you in trouble. While I can appreciate the point of the article, it has a rather narrow view on the types of books being read. Sure - some books are more about expanding your mental models. But in other books, the value is in the details. I'm really good at reading lots of books. I'd read one and then jump to the next one. A little over a year ago, I forced myself to put the brakes on. Any book where I felt the ideas are important, I decided to take notes. I write them on paper as I read, and later transcribe them to a blog so I can access them anywhere. It really reduced my rate of reading. But I'm very happy with the results. Forcing me to go over it multiple times, and then occasionally revisiting my notes, has made a huge difference. Yes, reading once will change your mental models. And reading again will change them even more (even if just a few months later). I think it is quite rare that you will retain all the big ideas (let alone the details) in one reading. As an example: How often have you come across someone who once read a book and is trying to change aspects of his life based on principles of the book - and you've had to point out how a number of their changes are in conflict with the book's contents? (Getting Things Done is a common one people get wrong).
- ronjouch 9y ago
  > Any book where I felt the ideas are important, I decided to take notes. I write them on paper as I read, and later transcribe them to a blog so I can access them anywhere. Derek Sivers 'Books I read' section is a fantastic example of that: https://sivers.org/book https://sivers.org/book

by nxc18 9y ago

kiba 9y ago

Learning is certainly about memorizing, whether that's facts or ideas or skills.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
dwaltrip 9y ago
Learning is about changing the way we think and perceive. This is not best done through memorization. Facts are important, however I would argue that the different conceptualizations of ideas and the relationships between them are far more important.
- kiba 9y ago
  My mistake in using memorization in a different sense. Let me clarify; memory is intrinsic to learning. Everything we ever know is based on remembering things. If you mean rote memorization, to repeat something over and over again until you remember it but not necessary understand, then that is only one strategy for learning. It works but it is rather inefficient and may cause one to miss things. Similarly, we cannot overemphasize learning concepts over practice and facts. A programmer do not look up syntax unless one is learning a new language. An even better example; quick bugfixing required a deep knowledge of the codebase, lot of experience with tons of different bugs and knowledge of debugging strategies. To me, it seems wrong to separate facts from the concepts, and skills from intellectual knowledge.
  - nxc18 9y ago
    If you really need to know a fact, you will naturally memorize it in the course of your work. In reality, the amount of syntax to memorize in your programming language is tiny; there are probably several keywords you don't know particularly well that don't impact your day to day. Further, almost all common languages share huge amounts of their syntax and much of the semantics of their constructs. Many chemistry classes require students to memorize the periodic table up front. This is a mistake; by doing chemistry work, you naturally learn the table, and, crucially, the patterns involved. Contrast this to how I was taught multiplication: memorize this table. As a result, I was both bad at multiplication for a long time as a child, and I missed out on the beauty of mathematical patterns for a long time. It turns out multiplication is actually useful, so now I could produce a times table - not from memory, but from scratch from the concept. I see far too often students who try to memorize the code for an algorithm - or even just the algorithm - without the concept itself. This is useless, it leads to frustration, and it fucks you when it's time to rewrite it in another language or add a twist. Seriously, do yourself a favor and stop memorizing things. Do things, and if it turns out you remember it, then that's how you know its worth memorizing.
    - oblio 9y ago
      > If you really need to know a fact, you will naturally memorize it in the course of your work. And then there's programming interviews for big companies, where they all want me to know minute details of things I'be never encountered in my day job, that I studied years ago in college, and that I will probably not need for my actual job (90% sure about this, seeing most products released by the big companies).
      - nxc18 9y ago
        That's a good point. I very fortunately left interview mode a few months ago, and have pretty deliberately blocked that part of my life out. As you might have guessed, I'm not great at it. You could argue that the fact that memorization is helpful illustrates how flawed those programming interviews are. It's just like any test in school, memorizing things for a short time before the test is effective, but it doesn't really help you in the long run. Good luck with your interviews :)
- coldtea 9y ago
  >Learning is about changing the way we think and perceive. This is not best done through memorization. Unless it has left a permanent mark in our memory, there's no "changing in the way we think and perceive".
  - dwaltrip 9y ago
    Sure, but this line of argument waters down the term "memorization" to something unrecognizable.
  - kazinator 9y ago
    Very next sentence after the quoted material begins with "Facts ..."; i.e. the comment is about the memorization of facts specifically (perhaps the same thing we call "rote learning"), not about "memorization" being any kind of enduring state change in the memory.

teh_klev 9y ago

> Read books for ideas. You can always look at the book for reference when you forget the details. This I agree with. Make marginal notes for some specific notable detail you think might be useful to recall in the future.

BeetleB 9y ago

>If you're reading books for the details, you're doing it wrong. Blanket statements like that will get you in trouble. While I can appreciate the point of the article, it has a rather narrow view on the types of books being read. Sure - some books are more about expanding your mental models. But in other books, the value is in the details. I'm really good at reading lots of books. I'd read one and then jump to the next one. A little over a year ago, I forced myself to put the brakes on. Any book where I felt the ideas are important, I decided to take notes. I write them on paper as I read, and later transcribe them to a blog so I can access them anywhere. It really reduced my rate of reading. But I'm very happy with the results. Forcing me to go over it multiple times, and then occasionally revisiting my notes, has made a huge difference. Yes, reading once will change your mental models. And reading again will change them even more (even if just a few months later). I think it is quite rare that you will retain all the big ideas (let alone the details) in one reading. As an example: How often have you come across someone who once read a book and is trying to change aspects of his life based on principles of the book - and you've had to point out how a number of their changes are in conflict with the book's contents? (Getting Things Done is a common one people get wrong).

ronjouch 9y ago
> Any book where I felt the ideas are important, I decided to take notes. I write them on paper as I read, and later transcribe them to a blog so I can access them anywhere. Derek Sivers 'Books I read' section is a fantastic example of that: https://sivers.org/book https://sivers.org/book