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It's funny, I used to be a pull person. I learned by doing. It worked great. But at some point, I picked up a book because of a recommendation and it was aston

It's funny, I used to be a pull person. I learned by doing. It worked great. But at some point, I picked up a book because of a recommendation and it was astonishingly good (Cocoa Programming on OSX, Hillegaas). It gave me a real sense of confidence and overview that I was lacking in all my pull-learned topics. I guess this is because pull only ever provides very localized knowledge but you rarely see the big picture. Since then, I tend to push-learn at first to get a feeling and overview over a language or framework and then gradually switch over to a more pull-oriented approach. This has served me very well. Some books out there are real marvels that can get you started with a new technology very painlessly. Gathering all that knowledge would take a lot longer. Yet, there is nothing as instructive as getting your own hands wet.

9ec4c12949a4f3 16y ago
Push will allocate concepts into the logical recall section of your mind, meaning that you make the effort to recall these things. For instance, if I'm designing a UI, I'll sit back and think about principals and rules before I do anything. Pull allocates into the creative regions, meaning you are a bit more intuitive towards what makes up good design. One isn't always best for all stages of skill development towards mastering something, and a healthy development is likely to include both sides of effort. A push-and-pull if you will. To draw an analogy, this is similar to language development in persons. Your native language is stored in the creativity hemisphere of your mind, and languages you are trying to pick up later in life are in the "information" side until they reach fluency. Cultural immersion would be a pull, where as learning from books is a push.