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Many years ago I used to be very proactive about my learning. I read tons of books, did MOOCs, tutorials, learnt new tools and frameworks... What I found with

Many years ago I used to be very proactive about my learning. I read tons of books, did MOOCs, tutorials, learnt new tools and frameworks... What I found with time is that I forgot most of those. Except for the very basic and foundational concepts, anything that I haven't kept practicing is almost gone. I can't even remember most of the courses or books I've read. Even worse, in some cases I ended up actually using that cool tool that I learnt 3 years ago. Guess what, now it is 2 major versions ahead and most of what I knew is useless anyway. I love the reference to JIT learning in the article. This has been my primary way of learning for the past few years: wait until I'm facing a problem, and then put the effort to learn enough to solve it. I still do some background explorative learning, but JIT is much more efficient and effective.

robbyking 6y ago
> Anything that I haven't kept practicing is almost gone. I think that's true of any method of learning. I once took a class on a proprietary audio visual language, and a year of so later my manager asked me to write some control software using that language, and I basically had to start from scratch. On the other hand, I took Stanford's first MOOC Swift Class, and have been using Swift as my primary language ever since.
- parenthesis 6y ago
  I find the learning something again for the second (or nth) time is at least easier than it was the first time.
  - vxNsr 6y ago
    Very much this. I'll take MOOCS read an article and then feel like I forgot everything only to have a much easier time "learning" it the second time when it becomes practical.
elliekelly 6y ago
> anything that I haven't kept practicing is almost gone. I can't even remember most of the courses or books I've read. I don’t think this is unique to MOOCs. I think this is a fact of life.
- dominotw 6y ago
  scary to get treated by a doctor who forgot most of the stuff they learnt in med school.
  - pvarangot 6y ago
    That's why it's important to find specialists when you need actual treatment, because they are treating the same thing all over all the time.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    Even scarier when you realize most of the stuff they do they didn't even learn in med school.

robbyking 6y ago

> Anything that I haven't kept practicing is almost gone. I think that's true of any method of learning. I once took a class on a proprietary audio visual language, and a year of so later my manager asked me to write some control software using that language, and I basically had to start from scratch. On the other hand, I took Stanford's first MOOC Swift Class, and have been using Swift as my primary language ever since.

parenthesis 6y ago
I find the learning something again for the second (or nth) time is at least easier than it was the first time.
- vxNsr 6y ago
  Very much this. I'll take MOOCS read an article and then feel like I forgot everything only to have a much easier time "learning" it the second time when it becomes practical.

elliekelly 6y ago

> anything that I haven't kept practicing is almost gone. I can't even remember most of the courses or books I've read. I don’t think this is unique to MOOCs. I think this is a fact of life.

dominotw 6y ago
scary to get treated by a doctor who forgot most of the stuff they learnt in med school.
- pvarangot 6y ago
  That's why it's important to find specialists when you need actual treatment, because they are treating the same thing all over all the time.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  Even scarier when you realize most of the stuff they do they didn't even learn in med school.