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I'm interested to know how other developers on HN prefer to learn. I really like just running into a problem and Googling my way to a solution. I read snippets

I'm interested to know how other developers on HN prefer to learn. I really like just running into a problem and Googling my way to a solution. I read snippets of docs, blog articles, SO answers, etc. and then try to piece together an understanding. I have a hard time incorporating videos into my ad hoc learning. What is your preferred method of learning new tools, techniques, etc?

omosubi 7y ago
I'm the same way. I find that choosing a project that inspires me takes me much further than just saying "I want to learn X, let me follow a tutorial". On a related note, I just read nassim taleb's anti fragile which has a section arguing that most progress comes from people tinkering with things to get something they can sell or to solve some problem they have rather than academics trying to understand things from basic principles. I don't agree with it entirely but that and my way of learning has led me to value experiential learning much higher than society does currently
- porknubbins 7y ago
  Tutorials on youtube are generally terrible for learning because they don’t show you any of the design decisions, mistakes, thought process etc. As if what stood between you and programming Tetris in Rust was not knowing the order of keystrokes. Udemy has (a few) authors with much better motivated examples I find.
- shantly 7y ago
  > I'm the same way. I find that choosing a project that inspires me takes me much further than just saying "I want to learn X, let me follow a tutorial". To piggyback on that, I need either a real project or genuine curiosity. I'm terrible at making myself learn something that I'm not 1) immediately applying to real work—paid or personal—not a make-work learning project, or 2) just really dog-chasing-a-bone interested, and I cannot gin that up or fake myself into that mode, though sometimes I can start poking around a topic and find something that gets me going. Fortunately for me I'm fuckin' good at working that way. Unfortunately it made school a real pain in my ass.
sedeki 7y ago
I am prone to buying a book about the subject. Problem is I already have too many books and honestly I don’t read them all. I didn’t read much technical literature before Uni, and didn’t know where to find information about technical subjects growing up (even as I was of the geeky type). My main problem is what to focus on. Not how to learn it. I guess reading a blog post instead of paying Amazon would be good for me. :)
- kilpikaarna 7y ago
  I find that amassing books or tools easily becomes a surrogate for actually putting in the effort to learn about a subject or do a project. When something piques my interest, it's pretty easy to just go online and order some stuff and get the satisfaction of having done something without having to put in much effort. Then once the thing arrives my attention has been directed somewhere else and I'm much less motivated to actually read or do anything with the thing, and it just goes on the pile. At least for doing practical projects, I've found that poverty is much more conducive to getting things done. Having to make do with what's avilable, free or cheap, and not getting distracted by shopping for the perfect solution. Likewise, I find that some of the most creative people on YouTube tend to be either pretty young or extremely frugal.
  - sedeki 7y ago
    My experiences exactly. I realized this a few years ago. So, do the books follow a particular theme, or are they on very disparate topics like for me?
mongol 7y ago
To me it depends what kind of learning I am after. Some subjects I want to learn more about for "entertainment & curiosity" reasons. This includes for example learning about historical events. This I prefer to do in a laid back fashion, I could read books of course but what I do instead is search for educational videos to find interesting lectures. I also search for podcast episodes on a topic. But is it more for professional growth I want to learn, I want to be hands on ("forward leaning"). Typically, write a program or a tool using a programming language I want to learn more. This takes more effort, and gives better results too.
tsumnia 7y ago
Check out some of my other comments and profile. I think one way to learn new talents are to enter into the domain fresh and behave like a beginner. With that in mind, a lot of beginner's work is about repetition, rather than constructive, which I believe is why it can be difficult to learn something new. So, for example, learning a new programming language - I'd say commit to completing the same low level assignments that you needed to do for your first language. Hell, if you still have them, redo them in the new language. As you move up in your understanding, then start to see what you can build with it. Or even simply "try" to implement it in the new language. Much of that first hurdle comes from devoting the same time amounts that you did in the past. It's easier to do at a younger age due to less responsibilities. As we get older, we still need to devote the same amount of time, but it's harder to do with competing activities vying for our attention. I've liked the term "attention economy" [1]; however, instead of advertising, I view a similar thing for education. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_economy
agumonkey 7y ago
I had a good run with the old library / book / pen / paper way. But it was mostly math or lisp, both things are nice to solve on paper.
jillesvangurp 7y ago
You are thinking about this wrong. When I need to learn stuff professionally, I do what you do; which is to google the topic and try to find a solution for problems I have. However, there's another thing I do which is to explore new things and be curious. When I'm not working I'm absorbing all sorts of information and some of it inspires me to do things. Knowing about a lot of different things enables me to be more creative when I need to solve a concrete problem. I watch Youtube mainly to relax. I watch more Youtube than Netflix at this point. A lot of the content I enjoy appears to be teaching about stuff. Some of the stuff I watch sticks. E.g. I'm baking a sourdough bread right now. In recent months that has become a Sunday morning routine for me. I learned how to bake bread by stumbling on some people explaining how to do this on Youtube. Since I enjoy eating bread, my mind went from "hmm tasty" to "hmm, I could do this". And then I had a lot of fun doing it. In the same way my cooking has improved dramatically since I figured out that implementing a recipe is vastly simpler than implementing an algorithm and infinitely more tasty. I have dozens of youtube cooks in my subscription feed. Most of what I see I never cook but some of it I do try out. I just gravitate to that kind of channels and I subscribe a lot of youtubers that inform me on a wide range of topics on a daily basis. E.g. I find it very relaxing to watch Adam Savage (of Myth Busters) go about doing some stuff in his workshop to build all sorts of wacky stuff. But I'm hardly a maker myself. I rarely use what little tools I have (i.e. non programmer tools). But when I do, I find I know that I seem to know what I'm doing.

omosubi 7y ago

I'm the same way. I find that choosing a project that inspires me takes me much further than just saying "I want to learn X, let me follow a tutorial". On a related note, I just read nassim taleb's anti fragile which has a section arguing that most progress comes from people tinkering with things to get something they can sell or to solve some problem they have rather than academics trying to understand things from basic principles. I don't agree with it entirely but that and my way of learning has led me to value experiential learning much higher than society does currently

porknubbins 7y ago
Tutorials on youtube are generally terrible for learning because they don’t show you any of the design decisions, mistakes, thought process etc. As if what stood between you and programming Tetris in Rust was not knowing the order of keystrokes. Udemy has (a few) authors with much better motivated examples I find.
shantly 7y ago
> I'm the same way. I find that choosing a project that inspires me takes me much further than just saying "I want to learn X, let me follow a tutorial". To piggyback on that, I need either a real project or genuine curiosity. I'm terrible at making myself learn something that I'm not 1) immediately applying to real work—paid or personal—not a make-work learning project, or 2) just really dog-chasing-a-bone interested, and I cannot gin that up or fake myself into that mode, though sometimes I can start poking around a topic and find something that gets me going. Fortunately for me I'm fuckin' good at working that way. Unfortunately it made school a real pain in my ass.

sedeki 7y ago

I am prone to buying a book about the subject. Problem is I already have too many books and honestly I don’t read them all. I didn’t read much technical literature before Uni, and didn’t know where to find information about technical subjects growing up (even as I was of the geeky type). My main problem is what to focus on. Not how to learn it. I guess reading a blog post instead of paying Amazon would be good for me. :)

kilpikaarna 7y ago
I find that amassing books or tools easily becomes a surrogate for actually putting in the effort to learn about a subject or do a project. When something piques my interest, it's pretty easy to just go online and order some stuff and get the satisfaction of having done something without having to put in much effort. Then once the thing arrives my attention has been directed somewhere else and I'm much less motivated to actually read or do anything with the thing, and it just goes on the pile. At least for doing practical projects, I've found that poverty is much more conducive to getting things done. Having to make do with what's avilable, free or cheap, and not getting distracted by shopping for the perfect solution. Likewise, I find that some of the most creative people on YouTube tend to be either pretty young or extremely frugal.
- sedeki 7y ago
  My experiences exactly. I realized this a few years ago. So, do the books follow a particular theme, or are they on very disparate topics like for me?

mongol 7y ago

To me it depends what kind of learning I am after. Some subjects I want to learn more about for "entertainment & curiosity" reasons. This includes for example learning about historical events. This I prefer to do in a laid back fashion, I could read books of course but what I do instead is search for educational videos to find interesting lectures. I also search for podcast episodes on a topic. But is it more for professional growth I want to learn, I want to be hands on ("forward leaning"). Typically, write a program or a tool using a programming language I want to learn more. This takes more effort, and gives better results too.

tsumnia 7y ago

Check out some of my other comments and profile. I think one way to learn new talents are to enter into the domain fresh and behave like a beginner. With that in mind, a lot of beginner's work is about repetition, rather than constructive, which I believe is why it can be difficult to learn something new. So, for example, learning a new programming language - I'd say commit to completing the same low level assignments that you needed to do for your first language. Hell, if you still have them, redo them in the new language. As you move up in your understanding, then start to see what you can build with it. Or even simply "try" to implement it in the new language. Much of that first hurdle comes from devoting the same time amounts that you did in the past. It's easier to do at a younger age due to less responsibilities. As we get older, we still need to devote the same amount of time, but it's harder to do with competing activities vying for our attention. I've liked the term "attention economy" [1]; however, instead of advertising, I view a similar thing for education. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_economy

agumonkey 7y ago

I had a good run with the old library / book / pen / paper way. But it was mostly math or lisp, both things are nice to solve on paper.

jillesvangurp 7y ago

You are thinking about this wrong. When I need to learn stuff professionally, I do what you do; which is to google the topic and try to find a solution for problems I have. However, there's another thing I do which is to explore new things and be curious. When I'm not working I'm absorbing all sorts of information and some of it inspires me to do things. Knowing about a lot of different things enables me to be more creative when I need to solve a concrete problem. I watch Youtube mainly to relax. I watch more Youtube than Netflix at this point. A lot of the content I enjoy appears to be teaching about stuff. Some of the stuff I watch sticks. E.g. I'm baking a sourdough bread right now. In recent months that has become a Sunday morning routine for me. I learned how to bake bread by stumbling on some people explaining how to do this on Youtube. Since I enjoy eating bread, my mind went from "hmm tasty" to "hmm, I could do this". And then I had a lot of fun doing it. In the same way my cooking has improved dramatically since I figured out that implementing a recipe is vastly simpler than implementing an algorithm and infinitely more tasty. I have dozens of youtube cooks in my subscription feed. Most of what I see I never cook but some of it I do try out. I just gravitate to that kind of channels and I subscribe a lot of youtubers that inform me on a wide range of topics on a daily basis. E.g. I find it very relaxing to watch Adam Savage (of Myth Busters) go about doing some stuff in his workshop to build all sorts of wacky stuff. But I'm hardly a maker myself. I rarely use what little tools I have (i.e. non programmer tools). But when I do, I find I know that I seem to know what I'm doing.