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> And I'm not sure why you'd want to when you can easily look up things in the documentation or on Stackoverflow. Why would you memorise foreign vocab when you
by ecdavis 11y ago
> And I'm not sure why you'd want to when you can easily look up things in the documentation or on Stackoverflow.
Why would you memorise foreign vocab when you could just look up what you want to say in a dictionary or phrasebook?
It's a silly analogy, but there's some merit in the comparison. Searching documentation takes time - perhaps not that long, but enough that if you had to do it constantly you'd become frustrated very quickly. If you look at some code you wrote recently, it's almost certain that there's a bunch of standard library function calls in there that you didn't have to think twice about writing. The same goes for basic programming patterns. The more you expand your repertoire of memorised functions and patterns, the easier it becomes to go from design to code.
- asimilator 11y ago> It's a silly analogy Right, very much so, because a live conversation using vocab is very much different than anything you'd do while programming. > The more you expand your repertoire of memorised functions and patterns, the easier it becomes to go from design to code. Yeah sure, but the criticality is much less, isn't it? Like it's not the rote memorization of function calls, or standard libraries that makes a good programmer. Design patterns, idiomatic language structures (i.e. how do I write truly "Pythonic" code), etc are all way more important than, say, what does library X provide or what are the args to function Y. Flash cards don't address the important parts of learning a programming language. And if you focus on the important parts, generally you'll get enough experience in the language that the things you'd want to memorize naturally just stick. My 2c.
- cgag 11y agoI don't think it's a particularly a silly analogy. You're going to be able to work better if you know what you're reaching for rather than googling around. Idioms and design patterns are also very well suited to flash cards.
- wolf550e 11y agoI think very few programmers used memorization techniques to learn a new language. When learning your first language (or one very different from those you know), understanding the ideas is much harder than remembering the facts, and when learning similar languages you start by coding something you know using syntax cheat sheets and Google, and by the time it works you remember the basics. If I had to switch between perl, python, ruby, php, lua, javascript all the time, I would consider Anki to keep the rosetta stone data in memory, but not otherwise.