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The one thing I have against learning in public is that it often seems like pandering to the lowest common denominator with generic learnings/advice. I think t

The one thing I have against learning in public is that it often seems like pandering to the lowest common denominator with generic learnings/advice. I think the people who are inclined to be constantly learning are probably less inclined to focus on broadcasting their life to others. That's not to say that there aren't people who learn in public and create valuable content in the process, they just seem rare.

nikivi 6y ago
It's up to the person how deep he/she wants to go in learning. The idea behind wiki/notes is that you are the main user of it. You just open it up for everyone. Right now so many notes are done privately and that's a shame. I also hope more people make an open learning repo [1] where they test out new technology in the open. It's been a nice productivity boost for me. 1: https://github.com/lpil/learning https://github.com/lpil/learning & https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/learning https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/learning as examples
- btrettel 6y ago
  > Right now so many notes are done privately and that's a shame. I have a notes SVN repository dating back about a decade with over 600 text files. I could split them into many more files as these notes aren't "atomic" as Zettelkasten folks say. The main barrier to release at this point is that many of these notes contain private information, or have brutally honest assessments of certain things that I don't want to be made public. If I had written them with public consumption in mind from the start then I would have done things differently. Another problem is that the quality of many of these notes is not at a level I'd be comfortable releasing. If I had intended to release these notes in the first place I would have spent some extra time to clean them up earlier on. My current plan is to slowly ramp up a public repository once I revamp my personal website, but as with many plans, I keep pushing that into the future.
klibertp 6y ago
> it often seems like pandering to the lowest common denominator with generic learnings/advice. I have a huge problem with this and I'm not sure how to fix it. When I start researching something, I don't write about it, because I don't feel like I know enough and I don't want to repeat the same "generic advice" that many people already presented. Then, when I reach my desired level of understanding, I start writing a blog post. I start with "fundamentals" I had to grasp before I could understand the topic. Then, after 6000 words, some diagrams, and several tens of hours put in, I start writing about the topic, but at that point it's almost guaranteed I'm already interested in something else. So, obviously, I leave the previous topic to rot in the "unpublished" folder forever. It would, thinking realistically, take someone paying me for the extra time to finish one of these posts, which would become either a really looong article, or a short book/pdf. That won't happen, because most of my enquires about how to be paid for writing something like this lay in the same "unpublished" folder... That's on top of the topics being rather peculiar (most recent example: "Using Haxe's Lua target to script my (Awesome) Window Manager" - started from quick intro to OCaml, two fixes I made to the Haxe compiler (which is written in OCaml) to get Lua target really going, quick intro to Lua and LuaJIT, plus AwesomeWM architecture and class library... at which point I stopped, and switched to the next topic: "Wiring and writing a Home Security-like system with RaspberryPis and Erlang/Elixir", which will turn into another abandoned try at a write up.) Basically, I start writing at the point I'm pleased with the solution to a problem (eg. the state of my WM, the monitoring around the house, or most recently a working Tizen Studio for native devel on non-Ubuntu Linux), which rids me of the problem, so then I have no motivation to write about it, or its solution anymore. I could go back, change the title, and generally edit whatever I have already scribbled, but that feels like work, and at that point I'm already learning about something else entirely... This is why this: > I think the people who are inclined to be constantly learning are probably less inclined to focus on broadcasting their life to others. seems plausible to me, at least. Though whether my broadcast would be more valuable to others than the "generic advice" (or more specifically, shallow posts on some tech, in "3 things you didn't know about IEx"-like style) is doubtful.
tta 6y ago
I started doing this a couple of months ago[1], and the fact that my notes are public acts as something of a forcing function; I’ve found that I engage with technical content a lot better this way. I consider myself the primary consumer of these notes (I’m not looking to provide learnings/advice in particular), but making them public has been a step in the right direction for me. [1]: https://timothyandrew.net/learning https://timothyandrew.net/learning
- sali0 6y ago
  Hey just wanted to say, after reading some of your posts, your subject matter is exactly the things I'm trying to learn, so I much appreciate your writing. I will be following your progress.

nikivi 6y ago

It's up to the person how deep he/she wants to go in learning. The idea behind wiki/notes is that you are the main user of it. You just open it up for everyone. Right now so many notes are done privately and that's a shame. I also hope more people make an open learning repo [1] where they test out new technology in the open. It's been a nice productivity boost for me. 1: https://github.com/lpil/learning https://github.com/lpil/learning & https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/learning https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/learning as examples

btrettel 6y ago
> Right now so many notes are done privately and that's a shame. I have a notes SVN repository dating back about a decade with over 600 text files. I could split them into many more files as these notes aren't "atomic" as Zettelkasten folks say. The main barrier to release at this point is that many of these notes contain private information, or have brutally honest assessments of certain things that I don't want to be made public. If I had written them with public consumption in mind from the start then I would have done things differently. Another problem is that the quality of many of these notes is not at a level I'd be comfortable releasing. If I had intended to release these notes in the first place I would have spent some extra time to clean them up earlier on. My current plan is to slowly ramp up a public repository once I revamp my personal website, but as with many plans, I keep pushing that into the future.

klibertp 6y ago

> it often seems like pandering to the lowest common denominator with generic learnings/advice. I have a huge problem with this and I'm not sure how to fix it. When I start researching something, I don't write about it, because I don't feel like I know enough and I don't want to repeat the same "generic advice" that many people already presented. Then, when I reach my desired level of understanding, I start writing a blog post. I start with "fundamentals" I had to grasp before I could understand the topic. Then, after 6000 words, some diagrams, and several tens of hours put in, I start writing about the topic, but at that point it's almost guaranteed I'm already interested in something else. So, obviously, I leave the previous topic to rot in the "unpublished" folder forever. It would, thinking realistically, take someone paying me for the extra time to finish one of these posts, which would become either a really looong article, or a short book/pdf. That won't happen, because most of my enquires about how to be paid for writing something like this lay in the same "unpublished" folder... That's on top of the topics being rather peculiar (most recent example: "Using Haxe's Lua target to script my (Awesome) Window Manager" - started from quick intro to OCaml, two fixes I made to the Haxe compiler (which is written in OCaml) to get Lua target really going, quick intro to Lua and LuaJIT, plus AwesomeWM architecture and class library... at which point I stopped, and switched to the next topic: "Wiring and writing a Home Security-like system with RaspberryPis and Erlang/Elixir", which will turn into another abandoned try at a write up.) Basically, I start writing at the point I'm pleased with the solution to a problem (eg. the state of my WM, the monitoring around the house, or most recently a working Tizen Studio for native devel on non-Ubuntu Linux), which rids me of the problem, so then I have no motivation to write about it, or its solution anymore. I could go back, change the title, and generally edit whatever I have already scribbled, but that feels like work, and at that point I'm already learning about something else entirely... This is why this: > I think the people who are inclined to be constantly learning are probably less inclined to focus on broadcasting their life to others. seems plausible to me, at least. Though whether my broadcast would be more valuable to others than the "generic advice" (or more specifically, shallow posts on some tech, in "3 things you didn't know about IEx"-like style) is doubtful.

tta 6y ago

I started doing this a couple of months ago[1], and the fact that my notes are public acts as something of a forcing function; I’ve found that I engage with technical content a lot better this way. I consider myself the primary consumer of these notes (I’m not looking to provide learnings/advice in particular), but making them public has been a step in the right direction for me. [1]: https://timothyandrew.net/learning https://timothyandrew.net/learning

sali0 6y ago
Hey just wanted to say, after reading some of your posts, your subject matter is exactly the things I'm trying to learn, so I much appreciate your writing. I will be following your progress.