14 ms·

Writing about what you learn pushes you to understand topics better

707 points by twapi 3y ago

gjvc 3y ago
"try explaining something makes you realise how well you really understand it."
- comprev 3y ago
  aka "rubber ducking"
lordnacho 3y ago
Seems to be a tradeoff between depth and breadth. If you write an essay about each thing you come across, you'll have to learn the stuff to some depth. That of course takes time, so there's fewer things you can learn about in a given time. OTOH one can also take the view that learning things properly enables more learning of higher concepts that depend on knowing your stuff properly, and so actually taking your time makes more learning possible.
- another-dave 3y ago
  > If you write an essay about each thing you come across, you'll have to learn the stuff to some depth. I took the author to mean a much more active pursuit when they spoke about learning — applying the technique to the stuff you're consciously trying to understand better, rather than just any new info you come across. That said, the depth/length of "write about what you learn" could be tailored to how much weight you want to put behind it — writing could be as little as a thoughtful comment on HN or a tweet as well as a blogpost/essay.
korp 3y ago
I don't recommend applying this technique specifically when reading this article, or you could become entrapped in an endless cycle.
- rkhassen9 3y ago
  Love this. Ha
codeulike 3y ago
But it takes ages
- zer0tonin 3y ago
  Learning anything properly, in general, takes ages
- andsoitis 3y ago
  there's no shortcut to knowledge
- simonw 3y ago
  My experience is that the more I write, the faster I get at writing something that I feel is good enough to publish. The great thing about self-publishing on the internet is that you can pick the quality you are comfortable with. No trees were harmed in the publication of this blog post!
progrus 3y ago
Yes. And then share with the world, and who cares if anyone pays attention.
- sph 3y ago
  It's a paradox. I'd rather no one reads my ramblings, but then why am I writing them? Somehow I feel it is a shame that most of my inane ideas only exist in my head. The freeing approach is just to write, know you're a terrible writer, and persevere. I guess that's how you become good, eventually, or maybe you get a following of other idiots that agree with your dumb thoughts :-)
  - hoherd 3y ago
    This is why I don't blog, and instead take notes that are publicly accessible. They're for me to refer to, but others may find them useful and I may want to share examples with my coworkers and friends, so I make them public. EG: https://danielhoherd.com/tech-notes/exiftool/ https://danielhoherd.com/tech-notes/exiftool/
    - SanderNL 3y ago
      This is really quite neat. Love both the idea and the execution.
    - progrus 3y ago
      This is super cool.
    - sph 3y ago
      That's quite neat, but I would say that's more effort than a post, at least for me. A post is a synthesized idea that has been going on in my head for a while. Write it and forget about it. Your tech notes are a labour of love that need constant maintenance, which I'm not prepared to do.
  - 6510 3y ago
    You need to refer to your own ideas as inane and to your following as a band of idiots because you know that is how the average reader likes to think of those, how they think of you as a random person on the internet. I've had more than enough feedback. Only one item remained that was useful, it boils down to: If you think topic X is worth exploring go do the f* work so that you can have a conversation with people who know something about X. They shouldn't care for your thoughts if you know nothing about the domain, they will bother to listen if you know the basics, they will give you time, attention and wonderful feedback if you know the topic well. They don't want to be your helpdesk, they want an exchange of thoughts. You will also be able to judge how great their expertise is which helps a lot ignoring and avoiding [negative] feedback from people who know nothing, are unwilling to learn and/or unable to think constructively about that what is important or precious to you - like exploring your imagination. I have a thousand great ideas that exist only in my head. At any time at least 999 of them are not progressing.
dikei 3y ago
I've tried to create a tech blog for a long time. But because I'm quite OCD about my writing, it took ages to create a post. In the end, writing became such a chore that I stopped altogether.
- jsemrau 3y ago
  The problem will be a useful differentiator to other tech blogs.
  - Xymist 3y ago
    Depth. Depth would be a useful differentiator. I need a few thousand words that actually teach me something, not three paragraphs that vaguely gesture in the direction of an idea.
    - jsemrau 3y ago
      I agree. Depth creates much more evergreen content than just "news commentary" or similar.
    - sgarland 3y ago
      THIS. My favorite example is Jeremy Cole’s blog [0], especially the stuff on InnoDB. You want to take a deep dive into the murky internals of MySQL? This is it. Tons of other stuff as well, but those are my favorite. He wrote tooling to visualize .ibd files FFS. [0]: https://blog.jcole.us/ https://blog.jcole.us/
      - hodgesrm 3y ago
        +1. Jeremy is well-informed and excellent at explaining technical topics. He and others like Jeremy Zawodny were major forces for good in the MySQL community back in the days of MySQL AB.
- tinsmith 3y ago
  My problem is time and being in the right headspace. Between family, work, and a plethora of other hobbies that get neglected, not to mention often crippling anxiety, it is astoundingly difficult for me to work up posts on my project blog simply because I am either too busy or not where I need to be mentally to write due to general and pervasive exhaustion. I have been trying to kickstart a space where I can talk about my projects and repairs/restorations for years, but never quite found the secret to balancing life and writing.
highwayman47 3y ago
True, but at what cost?
- bmacho 3y ago
  ^ this. It may be true that if you write about something, you will understand it better. Sounds logical, you spend more time with a topic, likely it won't confuse you or make you forget it. But is it also true, that this is efficient? Maybe if you don't write about it, instead just reread it, you can understand it even better, in less time?
  - BestGuess 3y ago
    I think it's because of how memory works so it's like asking "okay but what if I had a different brain" I wish. Retrieving what you learn is the best way I know to remember what you're learning, so writing about it would help. Unless everything I was told is wrong?
me2too 3y ago
That's what I try to do with my personal blog. When I find learn or discover something interesting I try to write an article about it. It helps me understanding if I do really understood the topic (and frequently it's not true), and it also is something really useful for my future self
OliverJones 3y ago
People working in science have employed this process for a long time. Hit your local academic library and look for periodicals called "Annual Review of whatever". More generally, look for review articles and you'll see their work product. Some of these articles are stunningly informative: Feynman's approach works. Review articles are not the same as meta-analyses; they aren't attempting to evaluate novel hypotheses using existing experimental data, but rather to understand the state of knowledge in a field. When an academic worker, especially one on the publish-or-perish treadmill, wants to get into a new corner of their field they sit down and write a review article to both get up to speed and to rigorously explore their personal approach. And everybody who cares about the field is better for it.
- azangru 3y ago
  > People working in science have employed this process for a long time. Hit your local academic library and look for periodicals called "Annual Review of whatever". More generally, look for review articles and you'll see their work product. Some of these articles are stunningly informative: Feynman's approach works. When you referenced people in science, I thought your example would be a laboratory log. That would indeed be an example of writing about what you learn, while you are learning it. Lab log is also a genre where the intended audience is the author himself, much like a diary. A lab log does not require originality - you may be documenting in it how you performed a certain bench technique that thousands upon thousands of people have done before you. A review article is a different genre altogether. It has an audience other than the writer. It requires some originality of thought. There is no need to write a review article if a similar one has just been published. Nor would working through a particular protocol from an established book of protocols (aka the docs) be considered worthy of a review article.
SanderNL 3y ago
Writing is fine, but publishing is another story. Makes me think of Eisenhower's "plans are useless, but planning is indispensable". Write, but then throw away your shit. IMO and I'm sorry to say it so bluntly, but articles like this are just adding to the already omnipresent noise. I am constantly blasted with tidbits, noobs' their "tutorials" and summaries of summaries. I'm a louzy writer myself. So it's not like I am actively looking for Pulitzer prize material, but here I find no elaboration, no personal reflection, nothing that elevates it beyond mere scratching of surfaces that have been scratched too much already. What remains is the harsh screeching of soulless abstractions screaming for some life blood. > "In a landscape where information is abundant, the ability to learn deeply, articulate clearly, and persevere consistently stands out as a valuable skill set." I'm so sorry, but this makes my skin crawl. This feels like the empty soul of Google itself has somehow found a host to incarnate into and it's now spewing forth bland insights in an attempt to somehow SEO-spam itself. I actively looked for anything besides regurgitation of obvious cliches and zingers such as "how to deal with burnout: knowing when to rest and recharge is as crucial as knowing when to push forward". I came up empty handed.
- softwaredoug 3y ago
  I disagree. Without the pressure and scrutiny of publishing, you won't scrutinize your own ideas. Others won't scrutinize your ideas and give you feedback.
  - SanderNL 3y ago
    I would be inclined to agree if the author had enabled comments.
    - softwaredoug 3y ago
      In my experience I pay attention to every social media place my stuff gets posted. I learn a lot that way.
- deleted 3y ago
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Decabytes 3y ago
I have learned so much writing my Substack. I refer back to my articles all the time when I need a refresher on certain topics. Plus it’s another feather in your cap when you are in a job interview. If you say you know xyz and you can point to a place where you wrote about it, it lends more credibility. I too have struggled with making writing a habit. But I’ve overcome it in a few ways. 1. I make a clear goal for the year. This year it was 52 articles. I’m on track with 38 2. I evaluate that regularly so I stay on track 3. I find the pressure of having subscribers to a weekly newsletter gives me the impetus to keep going 4. I regularly take time to appreciate all the work and articles I’ve made along the way. I celebrate when I hit little milestones 5. I talk about it often with the people I care about. That way I know it will come up in conversation, and I don’t want it to be one of those things I just say “oh yea I’m not doing that anymore”
- throw1234651234 3y ago
  I will form my thoughts as a reply to you, since it's in a similar vein. To me, writing is always a tedious process. I can ** out articles quickly, but 52 articles a year? This reminds me of people who say "Read a Book a Day"^tm. If you are really writing articles on topics you have a weak understanding of, while working full time, with the articles being somewhat original/new, how in the world are you writing one a week? To go back to the generic - journaling (and writing articles) seems very useful until you contrast it with the amount of time it takes to put out something good. For example, when I have "real" questions, I can't even find a Stackoverflow / Google article on them to even start researching, let alone have my own article out in a week. Unless you guys are writing "Here is the 5001st article on how FastAPI routers work", "Here is how z-level in HTML works!" or something.
  - Decabytes 3y ago
    I have a full time job so writing 52 technical articles a week would be too much. To give you an example of the type of articles I've written, here are the last 10 articles I've created. 1. Berkeley’s Digital Legacy: The Evolution of BSD and Its Influence 2. Tracing the Lines: From the Telephone to Unix 3. My experience with Pop!_OS Linux Distribution 4. Enhancing Emacs Efficiency with Xah Fly Keys 5. Learning to Touch type again 6. The Complexity of Open Source and AI 7. Racket: The Lisp for the modern day 8. The XML Connection: How docx and odt Share Common Ground 9. An Ode to Emacs. The Greatest Operating System 10. How to Fine-Tune Your ChatGPT Interactions for Better Results I try to create a backlog of easier articles that I can queue up. Then when I have a few weeks worth of articles in the pipeline, I can work on one deeply technical article that will take more than a single week to write. I've been pretty busy these past few weeks, and am about to go on vacation so I'm working on some lighter stuff. I just finished two back to back posts on Operating Systems (Unix and BSD). The next one will be on Plan 9, but as that one will require more extensive research it will be put on the back burner for a bit until I get through the rest of August. I read a lot of stuff on Hacker News, Substack, and Lobste.rs, Tech Twitter, and Mastodon, so those are great sources of things to write about. I have also spent the last couple of months updating my Emacs, switching up my keyboard, and focusing more on ergonomics, and those experiences ended up being articles. Once you get into the flow of it, you start seeing all sorts of things to that you can write about. > "Here is the 5001st article on how FastAPI routers work", "Here is how z-level in HTML works!" or something. I have done articles like that. An example of that is my article "A soft introduction to working with XML in C#" I've found that the people that are subscribed to my newsletter enjoy my "voice" and the way I write thing. They don't mind a simpler article every once and awhile. I wrote that article around the time I was working with XML in C# and I refer back to it every time I need to refresh myself. It's great because all the tutorials work for my workflow and are in my words so it's those articles end up being the easiest to follow!
hliyan 3y ago
When you blog, the world is your rubber duck.
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
I've found this to be true, in my case. I did this series[0], as I was learning Swift. It helped a lot. [0] https://littlegreenviper.com/series/swiftwater/ https://littlegreenviper.com/series/swiftwater/
etqwzutewzu 3y ago
For the past 10 years, I've documented everything I've learned on any topics, most often non-technical ones. Whenever I revisit a topic, I refine and update my knowledge base. I use a private github repo with textual files. This has helped to increase my knowledge tremendously.
paulorlando 3y ago
This was why I started writing about unintended consequences (unintendedconsequenc.es). I'd choose something I became interested in and would try to explain it to myself. I mostly moved on from the topic, but am using this technique for the next thing now. One note about the way that worked for me -- don't write for anyone but yourself. I went as far as to keep my name off what I published for a year so I wouldn't be self-conscious about it.
mabbo 3y ago
The hardest class, in terms of failure rates, in first year CS in my university was Discrete Mathematics. I got an A- and was pretty proud of myself. In third year, I became a TA for the course, marking assignments and hosting tutoring office hours. That's when I discovered that apparently I had learned nothing when I got that A-. Teaching a subject requires you to actually understand it, and not just know enough to pass the test.
- deleted 3y ago
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eightnoteight 3y ago
most of the benefits of writing are pretty clear to me but I'm still unable to improve the efficiency of writing i.e ability to put down thoughts properly and quickly rather than spending a lot of time on structuring the blog, very rarely it feels like english knowledge is the bottleneck
p4bl0 3y ago
I remember an old PhD comics strip where a professor says “Remember kids, the only difference between fooling around and science is writing it down.”. In the context the goal was obviously for it to be funny but it is actually a very good and wise advice.
- winter_blue 3y ago
  Wow, that's actually deeper than it sounds. I do wonder though: did a lot of famous scientists (like Einstein, Feynman, Turing, etc) use writing as a vehicle for learning?
  - maxov 3y ago
    Absolutely! (also see the article) https://www.colorado.edu/artssciences-advising/resource-library/life-skills/the-feynman-technique-in-academic-coaching https://www.colorado.edu/artssciences-advising/resource-libr...
    - mr_mitm 3y ago
      Also, see the Feynman algorithm: https://proftomcrick.com/2011/04/26/feynman-problem-solving-algorithm/ https://proftomcrick.com/2011/04/26/feynman-problem-solving-... > 1. Write down the problem. > 2. Think very hard. > 3. Write down the answer. The first step is crucial.
  - uncletaco 3y ago
    Feynman was famous for stealing his coworkers’ pens and pencils so I have to assume he was writing useful thing down.
  - simonw 3y ago
    See "inventor's notebook": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventor%27s_notebook https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventor%27s_notebook - some good examples of famous notebook habits are linked to from there (Einstein and Tesla and Edison and da Vinci are all mentioned).
Sosh101 3y ago
In a similar vein, I find trying to explain something to someone gives you a good feel for how well you understand it. Often I find that I don't understand things as well as I thought after such an exercise.
- matwood 3y ago
  Yep, only when you try to teach someone do you really understand something.
Waterluvian 3y ago
I dunno how prevalent this saying is, but I’ve heard medical students talk about “watch one, do one, teach one” as the best path to really solidly learning a Procedure. Writing about something is ostensibly teaching. I’ve adopted it, particularly with the robotics team I mentor, and it striking how well it works.
benmo_atx 3y ago
Don’t write about it; use it. The real world application of a new skill fleshes out your understanding in a way that is less vulnerable to your own blind spots, is absorbed at a pre-lingual level (closer to your bare metal), and might actually produce something of value along the way.
- goeiedaggoeie 3y ago
  using it is the first step. explaining it to others the next, and finally to really understand, writing about it so others understand it really embeds the knowledge. This is why written cultures in engineering organisations are so powerful, especially if you disseminate the responsibility of writing.
  - benmo_atx 3y ago
    I guess I’d say “using it” should be steps 1, 2, and 3. Explaining it and writing about it are generous ways to share your understanding, but in my mind that’s a different goal.
    - goeiedaggoeie 3y ago
      I have found that using "it" is a lot easier than writing about "it". It is not about being generous it is about deepening the knowledge in your mind and structuring it. different strokes and all that. In my engineering teams I enforce a "Written culture", from the bottom up (so mids and juniors are forced to write), as much as possible.
tallanvor 3y ago
This is a big part of the reason students are given homework. It really shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody.
Einenlum 3y ago
Completely agree. I wanted to learn Python, so I decided to write a book about it. In the end I published it and now I have two achievements: knowing python and having written a book. I would have never learned so many things up to this depth, if I didn't have to teach them.
mahathu 3y ago
Don't lecture people online on what they should or shouldn't do. It makes you sound like an asshole
- HumblyTossed 3y ago
  Somehow, you didn't take your own advice.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- SanderNL 3y ago
  I appreciate the irony.
westoque 3y ago
another similar concept i have found to be effective is to “teach what you learn”, i have noticed that it takes some good understanding of the topic you want to teach in order to communicate that effectively as well.
- chii 3y ago
  Not only a deeper understanding, but to retain the mental state of when you first didn't understand and be able to empathize that in your student's mind. Some problem domains simply becomes so hard to teach, because once you learnt the domain, you tend to forget what made it confusing or hard, and thus unable to "teach" it to someone who hasn't understood it.
andyadams222 3y ago
[dead]
- evertedsphere 3y ago
  in retrospect, sometimes don't write about what you learn about
mprovost 3y ago
I started writing a book to teach myself Rust but ended up teaching myself how to write. I've found that I have a much deeper understanding of the language now because I have to actually explain things in detail, and not just get the program to compile and move on. But I would say that the biggest side effect has been learning to write well. That has turned out to be much more impactful to my career than learning Rust.
- podgorniy 3y ago
  > That has turned out to be much more impactful to my career than learning Rust. Could it be that people assume you know rust if you write a book about rust?
  - mprovost 3y ago
    I would also assume so but then I suppose that it's basically impossible at this point to avoid a leetcode interview where you have to prove that you can solve Fizzbuzz, even if you've literally written a book on the language. But my goal wasn't to get a job writing Rust in the first place.
moomoo11 3y ago
I like writing but I think the whole “write it and you’ll get it” doesn’t work for me. It’s just extra effort. Writing is fun for the sake of writing. But I’ve not ever found it helpful for me to remember stuff or whatever. Either the subject matter makes sense on first pass, or I just need to practice it like math or something a few times and it sticks. Either you get it or you don’t. And write for fun.
- greensh 3y ago
  Sometimes I learn something and think I understand it. But when writing about it (without looking it up again) or teaching it to someone, I often find gaps. I can fill this gaps by reading it again or looking up another source. I like to think this method of filling the gaps is faster then just reading the material again, because it forces me to recall it first and therefore sticks in my memory longer.
LanceH 3y ago
See one, do one, teach one is the mantra in medicine. In the military it was common to hear, "you don't know something until you can teach a class on it." So there was an expectation that everyone should be able to pass on the skills they are responsible for.
- scotty79 3y ago
  Not necessarily. To teach somthing you need to understand it very well. The core of it. The essence of it. When I studied I was helping others with the material. I felt how much that improved my understanding of it. So they might have meant that you don't just need to be able to teach it. You'll understand it only after you've already taught it to someone.
  - throw1234651234 3y ago
    I think it's also important to understand where the practical understanding cut off is. When you tell someone to npm i some_package, you need to pretty much tell them not to worry about how that works under the hood. When you are teaching someone to load a rifle (to follow the initial example used above), you need to pretty much cut them off when they start asking about the composition of modern smokeless powder vs black powder or something. My point is that knowing how deep NOT to go is key to practical knowledge or teaching it.
- throw1234651234 3y ago
  To add to what I said in another post - I have found this very difficult to apply to code. Military skills, while underestimated, virtually always have very, very clear steps. Perhaps this is also true of specialized medicine, though probably not outside of quickly troubleshooting certain conditions (stroke) or certain common procedures (clear airway). Basically, combat medicine. In programming - good luck, literally everything you work with is new, all the time. I guess that's why FAANG tests on useless algos - it's at least something you can memorize and pretend it applies to everything. Maybe I am just using excuses, but I have never used things I wrote articles on: RxJS, Angular Route Resolvers, Modern CI/CD, Web Components - all of these things either died or I used them once in my career and even the articles themselves are useless.
simonw 3y ago
I started publishing "TIL" posts a few years ago and everything in this post here resonated 100% with my experience of writing those. The great thing about TILs is that once you form a solid set of habits around them they can be extremely quick to put together: the majority of my TIL posts take between 15 minutes and half an hour to write. I make extensive personal notes on everything I'm doing (in GitHub issues threads or VS Code scratch documents) - turning those into a TIL is mainly about pasting those notes into a Markdown file and tidying them up a bit. https://til.simonwillison.net/ https://til.simonwillison.net/ is my collection so far. I get a huge amount of value out of these. I don't particularly care if other people read them, the value is in helping me better understand the material and enabling me to refer back to them in the future. I refer to some of them multiple times every week! This one for example, about Python packaging with pyproject.toml: https://til.simonwillison.net/python/pyproject https://til.simonwillison.net/python/pyproject
- hosh 3y ago
  I think it’s a great habit and an effective method for consolidating what one learns … at least until someone cheats themselves using GPT to write up a TIL essay.
  - mochaki 3y ago
    [dead]
- lfx 3y ago
  You mister Simon, you are the inspiration! For TILs and Py modules. I wonder what's drives you to make so many Py modules? Do you see reusing modules for your own projects or do you have some other grand plan?
  - simonw 3y ago
    For me, the single most important thing about Open Source is that it means I can solve a problem once and then /never have to solve that problem ever again/ in the future. So any code I write I like to open source, because that's the best possible way I know of ensuring I won't have to waste time solving that same problem again. The other thing that helps is that I think I've found a cure for project guilt. I used to feel guilty about my projects - each one was Yet Another Thing that I should be spending more time on. The fix I discovered was to make sure every single one of them has good test coverage and comprehensive documentation. Effectively I treat each one as something which can stand on its own if I effectively abandon it - the thing works, and is documented, and other people can use it as-is without me feeling guilty that I'm not constantly actively working on improving it. I wrote more about that here: https://simonwillison.net/2022/Nov/26/productivity/ https://simonwillison.net/2022/Nov/26/productivity/
samsquire 3y ago
I enjoy writing down thoughts, the writing down the idea is really satisfying. I've been writing down ideas since 2013. I just use markdown README.md on GitHub, they're all public and open to people to read. I think writing is part of thinking. I frequently reread my notes. I would like to go into more depth with more thoughts but I am usually in pattern matching and permutation searching mode.
itissid 3y ago
I write my thoughts in table and for each abstraction/concept in a cell and ask myself if I need to understand a sub concept to implement it? And put it in a cell in the next column one row below. Sorta like: https://pasteboard.co/GJUcTLVI8jEn.png https://pasteboard.co/GJUcTLVI8jEn.png I keep breaking down the concept until I am happy with the level of abstraction and I can open it up tomorrow and not be like: " Hmm this sub concept is opaque and it should not be"
mavci 3y ago
I totally agree. In 2014, I wrote a blog post on a similar subject too. Original post in Turkish: https://www.phpr.org/neden-blog-yazmalisiniz/ https://www.phpr.org/neden-blog-yazmalisiniz/ English translation: https://www-phpr-org.translate.goog/neden-blog-yazmalisiniz/?_x_tr_sl=tr&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=tr&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-phpr-org.translate.goog/neden-blog-yazmalisiniz/...
rounakdatta 3y ago
Writing about what you learnt about in bite-sized flashcard systems also helps enormously.
ioslipstream 3y ago
This is basically the whole premise around the "creator economy". Learn what you're interested in, write it down, preferably in public, repackage/repurpose into something of value for the person one step behind you in knowledge/skill.
stainablesteel 3y ago
writing in general is a beautiful tool to give structure to your own understanding of anything. i'm also genuinely convinced that people do this quite naturally, but that school beats this habit out of you as it replaces what you would normally do with what you're required to do. once you take people's free will out of the equation, their own natural talents suffer the consequences.
wuliwong 3y ago
I definitely find this to be true. I started with a little notepad calculation on the question of "what if we replaced all gas cars with EVs?" I started adding some details and eventually put it out for anyone to see https://www.capsulel.ink/capsules/what-if-all-the-gasoline-cars-became-evs-would-there-be-more-or-less-pollution https://www.capsulel.ink/capsules/what-if-all-the-gasoline-c... Kinda an amateur "publication." It seemed so simple but the more I work with the question it gets more detailed and nuanced and I also keep finding errors in what should be an embarrassingly simple calculation. I think putting things like this out in the world and getting feedback is another valuable tool. I guess the author talks about attempting to teach it, which is part, but I also think getting criticism from people that know about what you are writing about is very valuable too.
- jweatherby 3y ago
  Where is the best place you've found to receive this feedback?
  - wuliwong 3y ago
    Hey, so honestly, from sending it to friends. Sometimes I can get feedback online but it's a pretty crowded, noisy place. :) I made this capsule site as a way for more casual publishing of ideas by "regular" people. I thought it might be a nice way for getting more quality, well researched articles online. I plan to add commenting and other "peer review" type features eventually. It will depend on the feedback from users, though.
GCA10 3y ago
Extra bonus for writing about your learning journey . . . Even for potential readers have been in the field for a long time, these posts can be supremely informative. It's great to hear about newcomers' shortcuts, some of which are mind-stretching for the old guard. And expressing a sincere interest in getting better is a great way to get support from existing experts who are glad to share.
BSEdlMMldESB 3y ago
but do not make the mistake I have: to believe doing this will get anybody to accept that you understand, or at least this has been my experience so far.
whartung 3y ago
Early on, this was a motivator for me to contribute to StackOverflow. I'd look at questions that I sort of maybe knew the answer to, but the question was a reasonable excuse to dive into more details and understanding so I could better communicate and answer the question. It was great way to get some arcane details about how things work. It's also related to that phenomenon of the process of writing out a sufficiently detailed question to a problem ends up answering the problem for you.
greenanteater40 3y ago
I think I can speak for everyone when I say: heck yeah, knowledge!
berniedurfee 3y ago
When I’m in a long message thread about an issue our application is having, a little “this would make a good blog post” bell rings in my head once the discussion grows beyond a certain threshold. I’ll copy/paste the text into my notes and will later generalize it and turn it into a blog post. Even if the topic seems simple and self-evident, there’s always someone out there who will benefit from learning from your experience.
nottorp 3y ago
I believe at uni they called that 'exams' :)
afk2023 3y ago
I was always interested in building an application that helps with this process (not just a writing application but something that guides you through this process). Does anyone know if such a service exists? If not, I might just build it.
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jacknobody 3y ago
I always wanted to be able to teach what I'm learning, so from the beginning of learning about a new topic is try and rephrase the information I receive and place it within the world I already understand. It's not so easy, but after years thinking about e.g. algebra I've become a good teacher.

707 points by twapi 3y ago

gjvc 3y ago

"try explaining something makes you realise how well you really understand it."

comprev 3y ago
aka "rubber ducking"

lordnacho 3y ago

Seems to be a tradeoff between depth and breadth. If you write an essay about each thing you come across, you'll have to learn the stuff to some depth. That of course takes time, so there's fewer things you can learn about in a given time. OTOH one can also take the view that learning things properly enables more learning of higher concepts that depend on knowing your stuff properly, and so actually taking your time makes more learning possible.

another-dave 3y ago
> If you write an essay about each thing you come across, you'll have to learn the stuff to some depth. I took the author to mean a much more active pursuit when they spoke about learning — applying the technique to the stuff you're consciously trying to understand better, rather than just any new info you come across. That said, the depth/length of "write about what you learn" could be tailored to how much weight you want to put behind it — writing could be as little as a thoughtful comment on HN or a tweet as well as a blogpost/essay.

korp 3y ago

I don't recommend applying this technique specifically when reading this article, or you could become entrapped in an endless cycle.

rkhassen9 3y ago
Love this. Ha

codeulike 3y ago

But it takes ages

zer0tonin 3y ago
Learning anything properly, in general, takes ages
andsoitis 3y ago
there's no shortcut to knowledge
simonw 3y ago
My experience is that the more I write, the faster I get at writing something that I feel is good enough to publish. The great thing about self-publishing on the internet is that you can pick the quality you are comfortable with. No trees were harmed in the publication of this blog post!

progrus 3y ago

Yes. And then share with the world, and who cares if anyone pays attention.

sph 3y ago
It's a paradox. I'd rather no one reads my ramblings, but then why am I writing them? Somehow I feel it is a shame that most of my inane ideas only exist in my head. The freeing approach is just to write, know you're a terrible writer, and persevere. I guess that's how you become good, eventually, or maybe you get a following of other idiots that agree with your dumb thoughts :-)
- hoherd 3y ago
  This is why I don't blog, and instead take notes that are publicly accessible. They're for me to refer to, but others may find them useful and I may want to share examples with my coworkers and friends, so I make them public. EG: https://danielhoherd.com/tech-notes/exiftool/ https://danielhoherd.com/tech-notes/exiftool/
  - SanderNL 3y ago
    This is really quite neat. Love both the idea and the execution.
  - progrus 3y ago
    This is super cool.
  - sph 3y ago
    That's quite neat, but I would say that's more effort than a post, at least for me. A post is a synthesized idea that has been going on in my head for a while. Write it and forget about it. Your tech notes are a labour of love that need constant maintenance, which I'm not prepared to do.
- 6510 3y ago
  You need to refer to your own ideas as inane and to your following as a band of idiots because you know that is how the average reader likes to think of those, how they think of you as a random person on the internet. I've had more than enough feedback. Only one item remained that was useful, it boils down to: If you think topic X is worth exploring go do the f* work so that you can have a conversation with people who know something about X. They shouldn't care for your thoughts if you know nothing about the domain, they will bother to listen if you know the basics, they will give you time, attention and wonderful feedback if you know the topic well. They don't want to be your helpdesk, they want an exchange of thoughts. You will also be able to judge how great their expertise is which helps a lot ignoring and avoiding [negative] feedback from people who know nothing, are unwilling to learn and/or unable to think constructively about that what is important or precious to you - like exploring your imagination. I have a thousand great ideas that exist only in my head. At any time at least 999 of them are not progressing.

dikei 3y ago

I've tried to create a tech blog for a long time. But because I'm quite OCD about my writing, it took ages to create a post. In the end, writing became such a chore that I stopped altogether.

jsemrau 3y ago
The problem will be a useful differentiator to other tech blogs.
- Xymist 3y ago
  Depth. Depth would be a useful differentiator. I need a few thousand words that actually teach me something, not three paragraphs that vaguely gesture in the direction of an idea.
  - jsemrau 3y ago
    I agree. Depth creates much more evergreen content than just "news commentary" or similar.
  - sgarland 3y ago
    THIS. My favorite example is Jeremy Cole’s blog [0], especially the stuff on InnoDB. You want to take a deep dive into the murky internals of MySQL? This is it. Tons of other stuff as well, but those are my favorite. He wrote tooling to visualize .ibd files FFS. [0]: https://blog.jcole.us/ https://blog.jcole.us/
    - hodgesrm 3y ago
      +1. Jeremy is well-informed and excellent at explaining technical topics. He and others like Jeremy Zawodny were major forces for good in the MySQL community back in the days of MySQL AB.
tinsmith 3y ago
My problem is time and being in the right headspace. Between family, work, and a plethora of other hobbies that get neglected, not to mention often crippling anxiety, it is astoundingly difficult for me to work up posts on my project blog simply because I am either too busy or not where I need to be mentally to write due to general and pervasive exhaustion. I have been trying to kickstart a space where I can talk about my projects and repairs/restorations for years, but never quite found the secret to balancing life and writing.

highwayman47 3y ago

True, but at what cost?

bmacho 3y ago
^ this. It may be true that if you write about something, you will understand it better. Sounds logical, you spend more time with a topic, likely it won't confuse you or make you forget it. But is it also true, that this is efficient? Maybe if you don't write about it, instead just reread it, you can understand it even better, in less time?
- BestGuess 3y ago
  I think it's because of how memory works so it's like asking "okay but what if I had a different brain" I wish. Retrieving what you learn is the best way I know to remember what you're learning, so writing about it would help. Unless everything I was told is wrong?

me2too 3y ago

That's what I try to do with my personal blog. When I find learn or discover something interesting I try to write an article about it. It helps me understanding if I do really understood the topic (and frequently it's not true), and it also is something really useful for my future self

OliverJones 3y ago

People working in science have employed this process for a long time. Hit your local academic library and look for periodicals called "Annual Review of whatever". More generally, look for review articles and you'll see their work product. Some of these articles are stunningly informative: Feynman's approach works. Review articles are not the same as meta-analyses; they aren't attempting to evaluate novel hypotheses using existing experimental data, but rather to understand the state of knowledge in a field. When an academic worker, especially one on the publish-or-perish treadmill, wants to get into a new corner of their field they sit down and write a review article to both get up to speed and to rigorously explore their personal approach. And everybody who cares about the field is better for it.

azangru 3y ago
> People working in science have employed this process for a long time. Hit your local academic library and look for periodicals called "Annual Review of whatever". More generally, look for review articles and you'll see their work product. Some of these articles are stunningly informative: Feynman's approach works. When you referenced people in science, I thought your example would be a laboratory log. That would indeed be an example of writing about what you learn, while you are learning it. Lab log is also a genre where the intended audience is the author himself, much like a diary. A lab log does not require originality - you may be documenting in it how you performed a certain bench technique that thousands upon thousands of people have done before you. A review article is a different genre altogether. It has an audience other than the writer. It requires some originality of thought. There is no need to write a review article if a similar one has just been published. Nor would working through a particular protocol from an established book of protocols (aka the docs) be considered worthy of a review article.

SanderNL 3y ago

Writing is fine, but publishing is another story. Makes me think of Eisenhower's "plans are useless, but planning is indispensable". Write, but then throw away your shit. IMO and I'm sorry to say it so bluntly, but articles like this are just adding to the already omnipresent noise. I am constantly blasted with tidbits, noobs' their "tutorials" and summaries of summaries. I'm a louzy writer myself. So it's not like I am actively looking for Pulitzer prize material, but here I find no elaboration, no personal reflection, nothing that elevates it beyond mere scratching of surfaces that have been scratched too much already. What remains is the harsh screeching of soulless abstractions screaming for some life blood. > "In a landscape where information is abundant, the ability to learn deeply, articulate clearly, and persevere consistently stands out as a valuable skill set." I'm so sorry, but this makes my skin crawl. This feels like the empty soul of Google itself has somehow found a host to incarnate into and it's now spewing forth bland insights in an attempt to somehow SEO-spam itself. I actively looked for anything besides regurgitation of obvious cliches and zingers such as "how to deal with burnout: knowing when to rest and recharge is as crucial as knowing when to push forward". I came up empty handed.

softwaredoug 3y ago
I disagree. Without the pressure and scrutiny of publishing, you won't scrutinize your own ideas. Others won't scrutinize your ideas and give you feedback.
- SanderNL 3y ago
  I would be inclined to agree if the author had enabled comments.
  - softwaredoug 3y ago
    In my experience I pay attention to every social media place my stuff gets posted. I learn a lot that way.
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Decabytes 3y ago

I have learned so much writing my Substack. I refer back to my articles all the time when I need a refresher on certain topics. Plus it’s another feather in your cap when you are in a job interview. If you say you know xyz and you can point to a place where you wrote about it, it lends more credibility. I too have struggled with making writing a habit. But I’ve overcome it in a few ways. 1. I make a clear goal for the year. This year it was 52 articles. I’m on track with 38 2. I evaluate that regularly so I stay on track 3. I find the pressure of having subscribers to a weekly newsletter gives me the impetus to keep going 4. I regularly take time to appreciate all the work and articles I’ve made along the way. I celebrate when I hit little milestones 5. I talk about it often with the people I care about. That way I know it will come up in conversation, and I don’t want it to be one of those things I just say “oh yea I’m not doing that anymore”

throw1234651234 3y ago
I will form my thoughts as a reply to you, since it's in a similar vein. To me, writing is always a tedious process. I can ** out articles quickly, but 52 articles a year? This reminds me of people who say "Read a Book a Day"^tm. If you are really writing articles on topics you have a weak understanding of, while working full time, with the articles being somewhat original/new, how in the world are you writing one a week? To go back to the generic - journaling (and writing articles) seems very useful until you contrast it with the amount of time it takes to put out something good. For example, when I have "real" questions, I can't even find a Stackoverflow / Google article on them to even start researching, let alone have my own article out in a week. Unless you guys are writing "Here is the 5001st article on how FastAPI routers work", "Here is how z-level in HTML works!" or something.
- Decabytes 3y ago
  I have a full time job so writing 52 technical articles a week would be too much. To give you an example of the type of articles I've written, here are the last 10 articles I've created. 1. Berkeley’s Digital Legacy: The Evolution of BSD and Its Influence 2. Tracing the Lines: From the Telephone to Unix 3. My experience with Pop!_OS Linux Distribution 4. Enhancing Emacs Efficiency with Xah Fly Keys 5. Learning to Touch type again 6. The Complexity of Open Source and AI 7. Racket: The Lisp for the modern day 8. The XML Connection: How docx and odt Share Common Ground 9. An Ode to Emacs. The Greatest Operating System 10. How to Fine-Tune Your ChatGPT Interactions for Better Results I try to create a backlog of easier articles that I can queue up. Then when I have a few weeks worth of articles in the pipeline, I can work on one deeply technical article that will take more than a single week to write. I've been pretty busy these past few weeks, and am about to go on vacation so I'm working on some lighter stuff. I just finished two back to back posts on Operating Systems (Unix and BSD). The next one will be on Plan 9, but as that one will require more extensive research it will be put on the back burner for a bit until I get through the rest of August. I read a lot of stuff on Hacker News, Substack, and Lobste.rs, Tech Twitter, and Mastodon, so those are great sources of things to write about. I have also spent the last couple of months updating my Emacs, switching up my keyboard, and focusing more on ergonomics, and those experiences ended up being articles. Once you get into the flow of it, you start seeing all sorts of things to that you can write about. > "Here is the 5001st article on how FastAPI routers work", "Here is how z-level in HTML works!" or something. I have done articles like that. An example of that is my article "A soft introduction to working with XML in C#" I've found that the people that are subscribed to my newsletter enjoy my "voice" and the way I write thing. They don't mind a simpler article every once and awhile. I wrote that article around the time I was working with XML in C# and I refer back to it every time I need to refresh myself. It's great because all the tutorials work for my workflow and are in my words so it's those articles end up being the easiest to follow!

hliyan 3y ago

When you blog, the world is your rubber duck.

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago

I've found this to be true, in my case. I did this series[0], as I was learning Swift. It helped a lot. [0] https://littlegreenviper.com/series/swiftwater/ https://littlegreenviper.com/series/swiftwater/

etqwzutewzu 3y ago

For the past 10 years, I've documented everything I've learned on any topics, most often non-technical ones. Whenever I revisit a topic, I refine and update my knowledge base. I use a private github repo with textual files. This has helped to increase my knowledge tremendously.

paulorlando 3y ago

This was why I started writing about unintended consequences (unintendedconsequenc.es). I'd choose something I became interested in and would try to explain it to myself. I mostly moved on from the topic, but am using this technique for the next thing now. One note about the way that worked for me -- don't write for anyone but yourself. I went as far as to keep my name off what I published for a year so I wouldn't be self-conscious about it.

mabbo 3y ago

The hardest class, in terms of failure rates, in first year CS in my university was Discrete Mathematics. I got an A- and was pretty proud of myself. In third year, I became a TA for the course, marking assignments and hosting tutoring office hours. That's when I discovered that apparently I had learned nothing when I got that A-. Teaching a subject requires you to actually understand it, and not just know enough to pass the test.

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eightnoteight 3y ago

most of the benefits of writing are pretty clear to me but I'm still unable to improve the efficiency of writing i.e ability to put down thoughts properly and quickly rather than spending a lot of time on structuring the blog, very rarely it feels like english knowledge is the bottleneck

p4bl0 3y ago

I remember an old PhD comics strip where a professor says “Remember kids, the only difference between fooling around and science is writing it down.”. In the context the goal was obviously for it to be funny but it is actually a very good and wise advice.

winter_blue 3y ago
Wow, that's actually deeper than it sounds. I do wonder though: did a lot of famous scientists (like Einstein, Feynman, Turing, etc) use writing as a vehicle for learning?
- maxov 3y ago
  Absolutely! (also see the article) https://www.colorado.edu/artssciences-advising/resource-library/life-skills/the-feynman-technique-in-academic-coaching https://www.colorado.edu/artssciences-advising/resource-libr...
  - mr_mitm 3y ago
    Also, see the Feynman algorithm: https://proftomcrick.com/2011/04/26/feynman-problem-solving-algorithm/ https://proftomcrick.com/2011/04/26/feynman-problem-solving-... > 1. Write down the problem. > 2. Think very hard. > 3. Write down the answer. The first step is crucial.
- uncletaco 3y ago
  Feynman was famous for stealing his coworkers’ pens and pencils so I have to assume he was writing useful thing down.
- simonw 3y ago
  See "inventor's notebook": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventor%27s_notebook https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventor%27s_notebook - some good examples of famous notebook habits are linked to from there (Einstein and Tesla and Edison and da Vinci are all mentioned).

Sosh101 3y ago

In a similar vein, I find trying to explain something to someone gives you a good feel for how well you understand it. Often I find that I don't understand things as well as I thought after such an exercise.

matwood 3y ago
Yep, only when you try to teach someone do you really understand something.

Waterluvian 3y ago

I dunno how prevalent this saying is, but I’ve heard medical students talk about “watch one, do one, teach one” as the best path to really solidly learning a Procedure. Writing about something is ostensibly teaching. I’ve adopted it, particularly with the robotics team I mentor, and it striking how well it works.

benmo_atx 3y ago

Don’t write about it; use it. The real world application of a new skill fleshes out your understanding in a way that is less vulnerable to your own blind spots, is absorbed at a pre-lingual level (closer to your bare metal), and might actually produce something of value along the way.

goeiedaggoeie 3y ago
using it is the first step. explaining it to others the next, and finally to really understand, writing about it so others understand it really embeds the knowledge. This is why written cultures in engineering organisations are so powerful, especially if you disseminate the responsibility of writing.
- benmo_atx 3y ago
  I guess I’d say “using it” should be steps 1, 2, and 3. Explaining it and writing about it are generous ways to share your understanding, but in my mind that’s a different goal.
  - goeiedaggoeie 3y ago
    I have found that using "it" is a lot easier than writing about "it". It is not about being generous it is about deepening the knowledge in your mind and structuring it. different strokes and all that. In my engineering teams I enforce a "Written culture", from the bottom up (so mids and juniors are forced to write), as much as possible.

tallanvor 3y ago

This is a big part of the reason students are given homework. It really shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody.

Einenlum 3y ago

Completely agree. I wanted to learn Python, so I decided to write a book about it. In the end I published it and now I have two achievements: knowing python and having written a book. I would have never learned so many things up to this depth, if I didn't have to teach them.

mahathu 3y ago

Don't lecture people online on what they should or shouldn't do. It makes you sound like an asshole

HumblyTossed 3y ago
Somehow, you didn't take your own advice.
- deleted 3y ago
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SanderNL 3y ago
I appreciate the irony.

westoque 3y ago

another similar concept i have found to be effective is to “teach what you learn”, i have noticed that it takes some good understanding of the topic you want to teach in order to communicate that effectively as well.

chii 3y ago
Not only a deeper understanding, but to retain the mental state of when you first didn't understand and be able to empathize that in your student's mind. Some problem domains simply becomes so hard to teach, because once you learnt the domain, you tend to forget what made it confusing or hard, and thus unable to "teach" it to someone who hasn't understood it.

andyadams222 3y ago

[dead]

evertedsphere 3y ago
in retrospect, sometimes don't write about what you learn about

mprovost 3y ago

I started writing a book to teach myself Rust but ended up teaching myself how to write. I've found that I have a much deeper understanding of the language now because I have to actually explain things in detail, and not just get the program to compile and move on. But I would say that the biggest side effect has been learning to write well. That has turned out to be much more impactful to my career than learning Rust.

podgorniy 3y ago
> That has turned out to be much more impactful to my career than learning Rust. Could it be that people assume you know rust if you write a book about rust?
- mprovost 3y ago
  I would also assume so but then I suppose that it's basically impossible at this point to avoid a leetcode interview where you have to prove that you can solve Fizzbuzz, even if you've literally written a book on the language. But my goal wasn't to get a job writing Rust in the first place.

moomoo11 3y ago

I like writing but I think the whole “write it and you’ll get it” doesn’t work for me. It’s just extra effort. Writing is fun for the sake of writing. But I’ve not ever found it helpful for me to remember stuff or whatever. Either the subject matter makes sense on first pass, or I just need to practice it like math or something a few times and it sticks. Either you get it or you don’t. And write for fun.

greensh 3y ago
Sometimes I learn something and think I understand it. But when writing about it (without looking it up again) or teaching it to someone, I often find gaps. I can fill this gaps by reading it again or looking up another source. I like to think this method of filling the gaps is faster then just reading the material again, because it forces me to recall it first and therefore sticks in my memory longer.

LanceH 3y ago

See one, do one, teach one is the mantra in medicine. In the military it was common to hear, "you don't know something until you can teach a class on it." So there was an expectation that everyone should be able to pass on the skills they are responsible for.

scotty79 3y ago
Not necessarily. To teach somthing you need to understand it very well. The core of it. The essence of it. When I studied I was helping others with the material. I felt how much that improved my understanding of it. So they might have meant that you don't just need to be able to teach it. You'll understand it only after you've already taught it to someone.
- throw1234651234 3y ago
  I think it's also important to understand where the practical understanding cut off is. When you tell someone to npm i some_package, you need to pretty much tell them not to worry about how that works under the hood. When you are teaching someone to load a rifle (to follow the initial example used above), you need to pretty much cut them off when they start asking about the composition of modern smokeless powder vs black powder or something. My point is that knowing how deep NOT to go is key to practical knowledge or teaching it.
throw1234651234 3y ago
To add to what I said in another post - I have found this very difficult to apply to code. Military skills, while underestimated, virtually always have very, very clear steps. Perhaps this is also true of specialized medicine, though probably not outside of quickly troubleshooting certain conditions (stroke) or certain common procedures (clear airway). Basically, combat medicine. In programming - good luck, literally everything you work with is new, all the time. I guess that's why FAANG tests on useless algos - it's at least something you can memorize and pretend it applies to everything. Maybe I am just using excuses, but I have never used things I wrote articles on: RxJS, Angular Route Resolvers, Modern CI/CD, Web Components - all of these things either died or I used them once in my career and even the articles themselves are useless.

simonw 3y ago

I started publishing "TIL" posts a few years ago and everything in this post here resonated 100% with my experience of writing those. The great thing about TILs is that once you form a solid set of habits around them they can be extremely quick to put together: the majority of my TIL posts take between 15 minutes and half an hour to write. I make extensive personal notes on everything I'm doing (in GitHub issues threads or VS Code scratch documents) - turning those into a TIL is mainly about pasting those notes into a Markdown file and tidying them up a bit. https://til.simonwillison.net/ https://til.simonwillison.net/ is my collection so far. I get a huge amount of value out of these. I don't particularly care if other people read them, the value is in helping me better understand the material and enabling me to refer back to them in the future. I refer to some of them multiple times every week! This one for example, about Python packaging with pyproject.toml: https://til.simonwillison.net/python/pyproject https://til.simonwillison.net/python/pyproject

hosh 3y ago
I think it’s a great habit and an effective method for consolidating what one learns … at least until someone cheats themselves using GPT to write up a TIL essay.
- mochaki 3y ago
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lfx 3y ago
You mister Simon, you are the inspiration! For TILs and Py modules. I wonder what's drives you to make so many Py modules? Do you see reusing modules for your own projects or do you have some other grand plan?
- simonw 3y ago
  For me, the single most important thing about Open Source is that it means I can solve a problem once and then /never have to solve that problem ever again/ in the future. So any code I write I like to open source, because that's the best possible way I know of ensuring I won't have to waste time solving that same problem again. The other thing that helps is that I think I've found a cure for project guilt. I used to feel guilty about my projects - each one was Yet Another Thing that I should be spending more time on. The fix I discovered was to make sure every single one of them has good test coverage and comprehensive documentation. Effectively I treat each one as something which can stand on its own if I effectively abandon it - the thing works, and is documented, and other people can use it as-is without me feeling guilty that I'm not constantly actively working on improving it. I wrote more about that here: https://simonwillison.net/2022/Nov/26/productivity/ https://simonwillison.net/2022/Nov/26/productivity/

samsquire 3y ago

I enjoy writing down thoughts, the writing down the idea is really satisfying. I've been writing down ideas since 2013. I just use markdown README.md on GitHub, they're all public and open to people to read. I think writing is part of thinking. I frequently reread my notes. I would like to go into more depth with more thoughts but I am usually in pattern matching and permutation searching mode.

itissid 3y ago

I write my thoughts in table and for each abstraction/concept in a cell and ask myself if I need to understand a sub concept to implement it? And put it in a cell in the next column one row below. Sorta like: https://pasteboard.co/GJUcTLVI8jEn.png https://pasteboard.co/GJUcTLVI8jEn.png I keep breaking down the concept until I am happy with the level of abstraction and I can open it up tomorrow and not be like: " Hmm this sub concept is opaque and it should not be"

mavci 3y ago

I totally agree. In 2014, I wrote a blog post on a similar subject too. Original post in Turkish: https://www.phpr.org/neden-blog-yazmalisiniz/ https://www.phpr.org/neden-blog-yazmalisiniz/ English translation: https://www-phpr-org.translate.goog/neden-blog-yazmalisiniz/?_x_tr_sl=tr&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=tr&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-phpr-org.translate.goog/neden-blog-yazmalisiniz/...

rounakdatta 3y ago

Writing about what you learnt about in bite-sized flashcard systems also helps enormously.

ioslipstream 3y ago

This is basically the whole premise around the "creator economy". Learn what you're interested in, write it down, preferably in public, repackage/repurpose into something of value for the person one step behind you in knowledge/skill.

stainablesteel 3y ago

writing in general is a beautiful tool to give structure to your own understanding of anything. i'm also genuinely convinced that people do this quite naturally, but that school beats this habit out of you as it replaces what you would normally do with what you're required to do. once you take people's free will out of the equation, their own natural talents suffer the consequences.

wuliwong 3y ago

I definitely find this to be true. I started with a little notepad calculation on the question of "what if we replaced all gas cars with EVs?" I started adding some details and eventually put it out for anyone to see https://www.capsulel.ink/capsules/what-if-all-the-gasoline-cars-became-evs-would-there-be-more-or-less-pollution https://www.capsulel.ink/capsules/what-if-all-the-gasoline-c... Kinda an amateur "publication." It seemed so simple but the more I work with the question it gets more detailed and nuanced and I also keep finding errors in what should be an embarrassingly simple calculation. I think putting things like this out in the world and getting feedback is another valuable tool. I guess the author talks about attempting to teach it, which is part, but I also think getting criticism from people that know about what you are writing about is very valuable too.

jweatherby 3y ago
Where is the best place you've found to receive this feedback?
- wuliwong 3y ago
  Hey, so honestly, from sending it to friends. Sometimes I can get feedback online but it's a pretty crowded, noisy place. :) I made this capsule site as a way for more casual publishing of ideas by "regular" people. I thought it might be a nice way for getting more quality, well researched articles online. I plan to add commenting and other "peer review" type features eventually. It will depend on the feedback from users, though.

GCA10 3y ago

Extra bonus for writing about your learning journey . . . Even for potential readers have been in the field for a long time, these posts can be supremely informative. It's great to hear about newcomers' shortcuts, some of which are mind-stretching for the old guard. And expressing a sincere interest in getting better is a great way to get support from existing experts who are glad to share.

BSEdlMMldESB 3y ago

but do not make the mistake I have: to believe doing this will get anybody to accept that you understand, or at least this has been my experience so far.

whartung 3y ago

Early on, this was a motivator for me to contribute to StackOverflow. I'd look at questions that I sort of maybe knew the answer to, but the question was a reasonable excuse to dive into more details and understanding so I could better communicate and answer the question. It was great way to get some arcane details about how things work. It's also related to that phenomenon of the process of writing out a sufficiently detailed question to a problem ends up answering the problem for you.

greenanteater40 3y ago

I think I can speak for everyone when I say: heck yeah, knowledge!

berniedurfee 3y ago

When I’m in a long message thread about an issue our application is having, a little “this would make a good blog post” bell rings in my head once the discussion grows beyond a certain threshold. I’ll copy/paste the text into my notes and will later generalize it and turn it into a blog post. Even if the topic seems simple and self-evident, there’s always someone out there who will benefit from learning from your experience.

nottorp 3y ago

I believe at uni they called that 'exams' :)

afk2023 3y ago

I was always interested in building an application that helps with this process (not just a writing application but something that guides you through this process). Does anyone know if such a service exists? If not, I might just build it.

deleted 3y ago

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jacknobody 3y ago

I always wanted to be able to teach what I'm learning, so from the beginning of learning about a new topic is try and rephrase the information I receive and place it within the world I already understand. It's not so easy, but after years thinking about e.g. algebra I've become a good teacher.