[HN Gopher] Writing a Programming Book in 2021
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Writing a Programming Book in 2021
Author : wilsonfiifi
Score : 145 points
Date : 2021-05-12 12:34 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jmtirado.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (jmtirado.net)
| strzibny wrote:
| I think it's a decent article. I mostly agree.
|
| But I want to say that I wish the credibility is in reverse. You
| should first be credible enough for writing, then you can boost
| it further for having it finished and well received. Just
| finishing a technical book is not enough.
|
| I am too finishing a self published book[0] so I am very
| interested in other self-published cases. I miss some sales
| numbers in the article or advice on marketing strategy.
|
| If someone is interested, I just shared how the first month of
| selling went for my book[1] (spoiler: pretty well for unfinished
| book). I will continue doing this, because I think it's super
| helpful for others thinking about it.
|
| Writing a good book is HARD. Marketing it might be even harder.
| Most authors will be net-negative considering salaried work, so
| share your numbers!
|
| [0] https://deploymentfromscratch.com
|
| [1] https://www.indiehackers.com/post/today-is-my-first-ever-
| gum...
| ModernMech wrote:
| I think one piece of advise missing here is: define your value
| add upfront. There are 1000 books on Go out there. What are you
| bringing to the table that others don't?
|
| The other piece of advice I have is: hire an editor and fact
| checker. The last thing you want to do is put substandard quality
| content out there filled with bad grammar and errors. This post
| seems to suggest that by self-publishing, the author did the task
| of editing themselves. I would say this is not advised if you
| want the best results. Hire a third party to do this work for you
| instead of doing it yourself. They will bring a fresh perspective
| to your work and help you see things that you cannot.
| Syzygies wrote:
| The programming book genre needs to be redefined.
|
| In college I was nearly thrown out of my math major, after giving
| no evidence of having started a year-in-a-semester modern
| analysis course, with three weeks to go. (I had been busy with a
| disastrous International Economics computer simulation using
| Fortran punched cards. Why, when Dukakis ran for president, did
| no one ask if "the world blew up his year?") I am forever
| grateful that "Baby Rudin" is such a thin book.
|
| A minor in English taught me that genres are not inevitable. They
| are cultural choices.
|
| Every year I get more comfortable recognizing I'm neurodiverse
| (substitute your favorite ADHD acronym) and so are many of my
| best students. Recognizing this makes me a better professor. Math
| notation, for example, is simply someone else's bad computer
| code. Don't blame yourself as you struggle to read it, and
| realize that everyone who succeeds has vivid daydreams that bear
| no resemblence to the bad code.
|
| I loathe nearly every programming book I've ever read. I live in
| fear that I'll turn the page and be writing a music player.
| What's that nugget about "never write a language for someone in
| their first week?" REPL examples always include all beginner
| "bird track" prompts, when anyone with an aesthetic sense
| customizes their REPL in the first week to hide all noise and
| syntax-color output. When I'm feeling an ADHD haze I can barely
| find the code samples on a programming book page.
|
| What I've learned as a professor is that everyone feels this
| resistance. Some acknowledge it. Planes don't crash because we
| minimize this resistance in the cockpit. The neurodiverse are the
| canaries in the mine shaft.
|
| I've learned dozens of languages, and bought countless
| programming books. "The C Programming Language" by Kernighan and
| Ritchie remains my favorite, a mercifully thin book like "Baby
| Rudin".
|
| Learning a language quickly, one learns how each chess piece
| moves, and still wonders how to put together programs
| effectively. Just as the greats in any intellectual discipline
| insist on only reading original works, the most gifted
| programmers learn by reading code.
|
| I also attempt to learn human languages as a hobby. The great
| difficulties I experience give me insights into teaching. What is
| most effective is a staged progression of readers, with parallel
| text nearby, till one can learn to read unassisted in the
| language. If the content can be anticipated (such as the
| wonderfully repetitive "Sapiens" in various translations) all the
| better. If there's also an audiobook, all the better.
|
| A programming book should teach a language through a sequence of
| small, complete code samples, so clearly delineated that a scuba
| diver 30 meters deep can work out what's the code, what's the
| blather. The main activity of reading the book should be puzzling
| out how each code fragment works. Skip the "word problems" and
| focus on simple combinatorial tasks that exercise the language.
| kuratkull wrote:
| Have you tried filtering your choice of books through something
| like Goodreads? In my experience choosing books with a minimal
| rating of at least 4.0, preferably >4.2 really leaves you with
| the cream of the crop. I just got deep into systems and
| software architecture and I've been very impressed with the
| first three books I've read. (Haven't tried it on actual
| programming books, but I'm pretty sure the outcome would be the
| same).
| onion2k wrote:
| The point about Credibility is interesting. There's something
| about someone who's written a technical book that automatically
| seems impressive just because writing a book is hard, and it's
| easy to assume that the person knows a lot. A long time ago I
| used to do technical review for a publisher on books about code.
| It was pretty obvious that some authors didn't really know what
| they were talking about. They knew enough to write something, but
| there were always _a lot_ of mistakes.
|
| I think many technical books are written to act as a 'proof' that
| the author is credible and knows their topic well rather than as
| an exercise in serving the reader or an attempt to make money.
| Tech authors know that they've not going to make much. It's more
| an exercise in vanity and improving job prospects. The author
| doesn't really need to be _right_. Especially "Beginner's guide
| to X" or "Learn X in 24 hours" books, experienced and
| knowledgable developers won't be reading the book to criticise
| it, and new developers who buy it won't know it's poorly written,
| so an author can write any old junk and still claim to be an
| expert. Consequently I've stopped being particularly impressed by
| people who have authored books on their resume.
| tfp137 wrote:
| _It was pretty obvious that some authors didn 't really know
| what they were talking about. They knew enough to write
| something, but there were always a lot of mistakes._
|
| This is why I'd be very hesitant to self-publish a technical
| book, even though for fiction I think self-publishing is the
| right decision 99% of the time. We all make errors, even those
| of us who do know what we're talking about, when you get to the
| scale of 100+ kilowords. For a novel, a decent copyeditor can
| fix up the production values well enough; for a technical work,
| you would hope the publisher assigned some people to check the
| work.
| cratermoon wrote:
| I once was contacted by a technical book publisher, known for
| producing a lot of so-so books on specific topics, to be a
| reviewer for a book on then-hot technology. The book was
| technically OK, but was put together in such a disorganized
| and sloppy way that it was a hard slog to look through it. As
| a reference text, it would have been ok had it been organized
| as such. This was before stackoverflow, but you could make
| the same book today by scraping all the stackoverflow
| questions and answers on a topic, throwing them together and
| calling it a day.
|
| And it was out of date very quickly.
| ghaff wrote:
| >And it was out of date very quickly.
|
| This is a problem with "then-hot" technologies. A number of
| years back, I was approached by a technical publisher to do
| a book on OpenStack. I wasn't the right person anyway and
| passed. But even if I had been, by the time a book would
| have realistically gotten to market, say 12-18 months, it
| would have been 3 versions back of the current project.
| onion2k wrote:
| _for a technical work, you would hope the publisher assigned
| some people to check the work_
|
| That's what technical reviewers do. I did it back in the
| early 2000s. You get sent a copy of a few chapters, and it's
| your job to review the code and explanations to find errors.
| It doesn't pay very well though - you get your name in the
| front, and a free copy of the book, but nothing much else.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > That's what technical reviewers do
|
| Well... in theory they should be. I published a book a
| while back through a publisher, and they assigned me a copy
| editor and a technical editor. The copy editor was amazing
| - it was clear she didn't understand any of the technical
| details, but she spotted flow errors and minor grammatical
| mistakes in dense technical prose. The technical editor, on
| the other hand, seemed to have (maybe) skimmed over the
| content and his only feedback was that he didn't like my
| writing style very much and left it up to me to verify all
| of the technical content. I did take it seriously, though,
| and I am proud to say that very few technical errors have
| been reported.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| I like the idea that all the code in the book goes through
| a CI so any edited get compiled and unit tested. Certain
| words and phrases could be given "type annotations" to
| check consistent use of language.
|
| Not to replace human review but should catch a lot of
| mistakes
| jedberg wrote:
| I did technical reviewing for a while. What frustrated me
| most was when I would say, "this isn't right, it's more
| nuanced than that" and they would come back and say, "this
| is a book for beginners so we'll just leave it the way it
| is".
|
| So now my name is attached to incorrect information, and
| occasionally someone will message me and tell me why I was
| wrong and I have to message them back and say, "well I told
| them to fix it but they ignored me".
| asicsp wrote:
| > _you would hope the publisher assigned some people to check
| the work_
|
| Depends upon the publisher too, whether they are interested
| in publishing quality books or have a quantity policy.
|
| > _We all make errors, even those of us who do know what we
| 're talking about_
|
| I was hesitant to write a book for a long time because I
| thought I wasn't good enough. I still think I have a long way
| to go, but I've grown better as a writer with experience.
| Feedback from users have caught many issues and helped me
| improve the content.
| perlgeek wrote:
| I have published three books (with a publisher), and I can
| confirm that Credibility was one of the bigger motivations both
| for writing them, and for going with an established publisher.
|
| For some of them, I started self-publishing with leanpub and
| was later shepherded into the publisher, and I got the
| impression I could make at least the same amount of money on
| leanpub.
| onion2k wrote:
| You just need to put a camel on the front of your next book
| and it'll sell millions.
| II2II wrote:
| Why would anyone consider an entry level title as a sign of
| credibility at this point? I remember picking up such books a
| quarter century ago where it was abundantly clear the author
| either had very little knowledge on the subject or the
| publisher was simply trying to profit off of the latest fad.
| That isn't to say that a book cannot be used as proof of
| knowledge, communications skills, etc.. In some ways it may be
| better than most forms of proof since it can actually be
| verified. On the other hand, it's useless unless the quality is
| actually assessed.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Interviewed an author of a programming book. We were very
| excited about it.
|
| He knew crap about programming. Was an excellent writer.
| baron_harkonnen wrote:
| > Now if you send in a paper that has a radically new idea,
| there's no chance in hell it will get accepted, because it's
| going to get some junior reviewer who doesn't understand it.
| Or it's going to get a senior reviewer who's trying to review
| too many papers and doesn't understand it first time round
| and assumes it must be nonsense. Anything that makes the
| brain hurt is not going to get accepted. And I think that's
| really bad.
|
| -- Geoffrey Hinton
|
| I've found that Hinton's experience with publishing holds
| doubly true for technical interviews, and am always surprised
| often people in tech refuse to question their own interview
| process rather than assume that everyone that doesn't pass it
| must be an idiot, independent of your prior expectations.
|
| While it is very possible that someone who is a great writer
| on technical topics is not a great match for your team, I
| really don't believe that this person "knew crap" about
| programming. It is virtually impossible to write well about a
| subject you don't understand.
|
| Again, it wouldn't surprised me at all that an expert on a
| topic might not be a good fit for your role, take Scott
| Meyers as an example. He's frequently admitted that he has
| little software engineering experience, and is not a software
| engineer. You should probably not hire Scott Meyers as a
| software dev. But if your conclusion after interviewing him
| was that he "knew crap about C++" I would read that as an
| implicit critique of your interview process, not Scott
| Meyers.
|
| Based on my experience interviewing, the vast majority of
| data scientist interviewers would quickly write-off Hinton as
| someone who "knows crap" about data science because they very
| likely would not understand the answers that Hinton is
| giving.
|
| Unfortunately, in tech hiring these days, true expertise is
| far more often then not a liability.
| treeman79 wrote:
| I get what your saying, and have been given bad interview
| tests before.
|
| My baseline test is to swap keys and values in a
| [hash/map/dictionary]. In any language of their choice. So
| [a=>1, b=>2, c=2] Becomes [1=>a, 2=>[b,c]]
|
| 75% fail completely. Some struggle but pass.
|
| Others complete it in a minute and are confused as to why
| such an easy test.
| k__ wrote:
| I have reviewed so many technical books that were simply bad
| copies of the documentation. And that by authors who have
| written 10 books.
|
| And the (rather big) publisher didn't seem to care at all.
| dhosek wrote:
| In technical book publishing, the publisher is a good signal
| as to the quality of the contents inside. I have never seen a
| worthwhile book from APress.
|
| 10 books from an author of technical books is a negative
| signal. There's not a lot of money in writing technical books
| so there's an incentive to pump out books without concern for
| quality. I remember trying to learn C++ in the 90s and nearly
| every book I read was complete garbage (the authors seemed to
| think that C++ was C with different comment syntax and using
| cout << in place of printf). It wasn't until I read the first
| STL book that things finally clicked.
| dmlorenzetti wrote:
| "Numerical Python" by Johansson was an exception for me.
| prtkgpt wrote:
| It must be hella hard lol!
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Stay to your index > > A book has a beginning and an ending.
| Remember that. Write down your index of contents before you start
| writing.
|
| The table of contents is typically not an index. An index is
| something else found at the end of the book.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| It's still an index though right? Just an index of chapters and
| not key words right?
| themulticaster wrote:
| I agree that you could technically say the table of contents
| is an index (comparing it to a DB index), but because "index"
| also means something completely different in this context I
| would avoid using the term this way.
| justaguy88 wrote:
| If book < 100 pages, I'm more likely to read it.
|
| Can only recommend it to others after reading.
| MrPowers wrote:
| I wrote a couple of books recently and have some tips for
| aspiring authors:
|
| * Start by blogging. Try to get thousands of daily pageviews with
| an average time on page > 5 minutes. Objectively verify you're
| able to write content that's engaging.
|
| * Try to fill a niche. My book is focused on practical advice for
| getting productive with Spark using the Scala API quickly. There
| are other books that cover theory, discuss all 4 language APIs
| simultaneously, and are API documentation narratives (e.g.
| Chapter 4 will cover all the DataFrame methods in alphabetical
| order). Most people don't have the attention span for huge books.
|
| * Target middle school reading level. Short sentences & simple
| words. Technical audiences want information and don't care much
| about literary prose.
|
| * Organize your code snippets in a repo, so it's easy to update
| your book
|
| I got some offers from publishers, but went the self-publishing
| route cause I didn't think that a publisher could give too much
| valuable feedback on such a technical topic. Lots of my blog
| readers told me my blogs are easy to follow, so I felt confident
| I didn't need a professional editor. Publishers pay 20% royalties
| and self publishing lets you keep 80%+, so you should only go
| with a publisher if they can add that extra value.
|
| Writing a book was a great experience for me. It's an easy way to
| train folks who are new to Spark. Several folks have emailed me,
| told me they can't afford the book, and I've sent them free
| copies. Don't think writing books is a great way to make money,
| but it's great if you have altruistic motives.
| thewhitetulip wrote:
| Traditional publishing doesn't earn well.
|
| I've written two tech books, one python and one Go.
|
| Not have earned me much more than Apress was offering!
|
| I'm based in India though, so $ to Rupee conversion is helpful
| for me.
|
| My books are pay as you choose. So if those who can't pay can
| download my high quality book for free. Total readers till now
| for Go book has been more than 6k!
| ggambetta wrote:
| I followed a similar path with Computer Graphics from Scratch
| [0], somewhat accidentally. You'd be surprised about how much
| valuable feedback a publisher can give on such a technical
| topic! When No Starch Press approached me I thought _" the
| content is almost finished, this will take a month or two"_. It
| took two years, and the book is significantly better after I
| went through the process with them.
|
| [0] https://gabrielgambetta.com/computer-graphics-from-scratch/
| MrPowers wrote:
| Thanks for sharing! I actually chatted with No Starch Press
| and met with them in their offices. Really nice people and
| amazing vibe. I am working on a PySpark book and will reach
| out to No Starch again based on your comment.
| mattferderer wrote:
| If your material has a long life, you could self publish. Then
| a year or 2 later after sales have dwindled you could look for
| a publisher interested in taking over it & giving it a new
| life.
|
| If you self publish you can contract your own professional
| editor or reviewers. It's worth doing if you're spending
| significant time/money in the book &/or marketing. Some popular
| tech book publishers crowdsource their editing by giving free
| copies to people interested in editing.
| flakiness wrote:
| > * Target middle school reading level. Short sentences &
| simple words. Technical audiences want information and don't
| care much about literary prose.
|
| As a non-native English reader, yes please! Also: Please keep
| it short.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| _> Target middle school reading level. Short sentences &
| simple words. Technical audiences want information and don't
| care much about literary prose._
|
| Also, don't bury the lede, but put the main points in the first
| paragraph, then elaborate on them throughout the rest of the
| essay.
|
| The Abstract in academic papers is a good example - state the
| problem, explain how you addressed/explored it, and report your
| conclusions. Don't bury your conclusions in the paper, but use
| the paper to elaborate in detail on how you arrived at them.
|
| As for targeting middle school reading level, Scott Adams has a
| good writeup on exactly how to do that:
|
| https://www.scottadamssays.com/2015/08/22/the-day-you-became...
| ska wrote:
| > I felt confident I didn't need a professional editor.
|
| FWIW, I think this almost always bad advice. Being your own
| editor is a bit like being your own lawyer - even if you have
| the right skills you don't have the right perspective.
|
| It's obvious when something is desperately in need of editing.
| What's less obvious is how much better something "ok" could be
| with a good editor.
| belval wrote:
| Well from a purely monetary standpoint, if you make 4x more
| money when publishing yourself you can afford to sell 4 times
| fewer books to make the same amount, so the real question is:
| can the editor impact my book so much that it will increase
| sales 4 times?
|
| Not saying that you are wrong, more that there are legitimate
| reasons why an editor might not be the right way forward.
| ska wrote:
| > more that there are legitimate reasons why and editor
| might not be the right way forward.
|
| I think this is true, and certainly didn't mean to suggest
| otherwise. It's just that "a (good) editor wouldn't improve
| my output" is approximately never true.
|
| Whether that improvement is worth whatever it costs you to
| get it is a separable question.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Also what is the cost of hiring an editor if you are self
| publishing? That's another route and I bet you could find
| a good one at a more reasonable cost.
| mtlynch wrote:
| I agree.
|
| I hired a freelance editor to help me with my blog, and it
| was the best money I ever spent for improving my professional
| writing.[0] You can get a good editor and still self-publish.
|
| If money's tight, there's still substantial value in just
| having an editor review a portion of your book and telling
| you about anti-patterns in your writing.
|
| [0] http://mtlynch.io/editor/
| acvny wrote:
| Good points! Thanks.
| tfp137 wrote:
| _Self-publishing has always been an option for authors. Some
| publishing houses offer you resources to publish your work. You
| simply pay them and they review and print your book. It seems to
| be a fair arrangement. However, after five minutes in Google, you
| will find out that many self-published authors had terrible
| experiences or were scammed. Finding a decent and professional
| publishing house requires time. You cannot trust the first one
| you find in Google._
|
| Those "self-publishing companies" are often next-generation
| vanity press. Then again, bottom tier traditional publishing--
| and the dangerous part is, this includes bottom-tier deals from
| "Big 5" imprints-- are basically vanity press as well.
|
| The number of first-time authors who get traditional deals
| actually worth taking (the kind that come with 6-figure marketing
| budgets and TV spots delivered in-hand) is probably in the double
| digits per year-- it's not that hard to "get an agent" if you're
| willing to take abuse, but 98% of literary agents have no real
| connections but serve as an HR wall, existing solely to filter
| out the deserving perma-slush, that will probably be replaced
| with machine learning algorithms soon.
|
| Publishing gives writers a possibly necessary but very unpleasant
| introduction to the reality of commerce-- there are so, so many
| people out there looking to get as much as they can (money) and
| give as little as possible. This applies when you pay thousands
| of dollars to a "self-publishing company" and get work (cover
| design, editing, et al) that a high schooler could have done...
| but it also applies when you sign away your rights to a "Big 5"
| for a piddly advance and no marketing.
|
| I think the game's very different for programming books than it
| is for, say, fiction. Generally, people don't write books about
| Python because they think they're going to quit their day jobs.
| At the same time, people who can write even passable programming
| books are fairly few in number... whereas people who can write
| passable novels that could in theory become the next _50 Shades_
| are commonplace (although people who can write _good_ novels are
| very rare).
|
| It's impossible to say what it requires not to get scammed in
| publishing-- you have to take some risks, and who can say what
| risks are right to take?-- but a good first step is to accept the
| very real possibility that you do everything right and still
| don't sell more than a few dozen copies. Sometimes terrible books
| sell ( _50 Shades_ ) and sometimes great books go ignored for
| thirty years.
| acvny wrote:
| The author forgot to mention that Amazon kindle publishing take
| 70% out of your sale price :) Also, that when they print the
| books, the quality sucks - thick cheap printer paper, toner saver
| enabled. As a customer I have had very bad experience with books
| printed by Amazon.
| munificent wrote:
| _> Also, that when they print the books, the quality sucks -
| thick cheap printer paper, toner saver enabled. _
|
| For what it's worth, I found the printed copies of my self-
| published book from Amazon often had higher quality than many
| CS books I have from traditional publishers.
| wccrawford wrote:
| >You don't really understand something unless you can explain it
| to your grandma
|
| I've seen a lot of blog posts written for this reason, and
| they're all pretty crappy. I really hope that wasn't seriously a
| reason to write a book.
| mettamage wrote:
| While the tone of the parent is a bit, well, it could be better
| :) I do think the parent has a point. For example, I just
| finished reading Modern Operating Systems by Tanenbaum. His
| experience shows. This form of experience cannot be showcased
| by someone who's learning or just has learned a particular
| technology. And I know I'm taking one of the giants as an
| example, and they show this particular example in its most
| extreme form.
|
| With that said, I have read/watched tutorials by people who
| just learned something and the empathy level to beginners is
| really high. That's something that can be missing with people
| who have years and years of experience.
| tfp137 wrote:
| I agree. That said, I think the "your grandma" line should be
| retired.
|
| 1. It's problematic. Why are we assuming that an old woman
| can't also be a badass programmer? Plenty of CS luminaries
| (a) were women, and (b) had kids (c) who themselves had kids,
| and therefore are someone's grandmother.
|
| 2. Your audience isn't necessarily non-technical. Generally
| your audience is going to be someone who's qualified to take
| the course. Which means that a good explainer is going to, as
| you said, have a high degree of empathy to beginners... but
| not explain things at such an introductory level as to leave
| people bored.
|
| 3. I don't agree that people who can't explain things well to
| non-technical people don't know their stuff; they lack an
| important skill that could make their knowledge far more
| useful to humanity, but that's a different claim from saying
| that the knowledge doesn't exist.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Not to mention that the demographic of "grandparents whose
| grandchildren are old enough to explain computer issues to
| them" had mainstream access to computers much earlier in
| their lives than the same demographic ~20 years ago when
| access to computers hit its inflection point between
| "enthusiasts" and "everybody".
| ska wrote:
| > I agree. That said, I think the "your grandma" line
| should be retired.
|
| Attributed to Einstein: "If you can't explain it to a six
| year old, you don't understand it yourself."
|
| I've always thought that was a better version. But this was
| never a comment that you should explain things _as if_ your
| audience was a six year old. Part of communications skill
| is the ability to pick the right level for whatever your
| audience is. This quote is much more literal - it 's saying
| the if the range of people you could explain this too
| doesn't include small children, there is more for you to
| understand.
|
| For what it's worth I disagree with your (3); it's not just
| about communication - people often feel that they really
| understand something when they have a handle on a lot of
| technical details, but this isn't true. There is a deeper
| level of understanding that will let you synthesize this
| and find the real core of what is going on. I've found it
| to be universally true that if someone cannot do this,
| however awkwardly communicated, they don't understand the
| subject as well as they think they do.
|
| This happens with PhD students and "sr" engineers all the
| time. They may have spent the last 6 months thinking deeply
| about an area, and when you ask them to explain it to an
| "talented outsider" they can't. A few years later if you
| ask the same thing their answers will be much better,
| because they understand much better.
| jon-wood wrote:
| Off topic, but as the father to a seven year old I've
| discovered how many things I don't really understand over
| the last few years. His interest in black holes recently
| has me thinking I need to read a whole heap about
| relativity.
| ska wrote:
| I suspect this is why six was picked in the anectdote.
| Kids around that age are really good at asking "why"
| until you are stuck.
| dhosek wrote:
| I'm finishing up my LaTeX book which has its origins from
| teaching LaTeX classes for the TeX Users Group in the 90s.
| That teaching experience is essential for the quality of what
| I have because I have the experience of knowing what's
| helpful for LaTeX beginners and what's needlessly confusing.
| I do suspect that my original target audience--math
| department secretaries--is no longer the target audience.
| ehnto wrote:
| Certainly agree, you forget all that you have learned and
| even harder to recall are those epiphany moments that altered
| your point of view entirely. If you can recreate those
| moments for others, you add an edge to your teaching.
| paxys wrote:
| I loathe this saying, along with the entire "explain it like
| I'm five" trend that has taken off in recent years. Yes simple
| and concise explanations are valuable, but there still needs to
| be a baseline. There are certain things that just cannot be
| explained to a layperson unless they have some prerequisite
| knowledge in the field. I didn't know Einsten's grandma, but it
| is safe to assume that the lady did not exactly grasp the
| theory of relativity or quantum physics.
|
| Here's a better quote (also sometimes attributed/misattributed
| to Einstein) - "Everything should be made as simple as
| possible, but no simpler."
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