[HN Gopher] Writing about what you learn pushes you to understan...
___________________________________________________________________
Writing about what you learn pushes you to understand topics better
Author : twapi
Score : 582 points
Date : 2023-08-14 08:58 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (addyosmani.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (addyosmani.com)
| moomoo11 wrote:
| 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.
| westoque wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| paulorlando wrote:
| 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.
| itissid wrote:
| 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
|
| 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"
| andyadams222 wrote:
| Discovering this https://top10seosoftware.com/reviews/raven/
| review about Raven was a marketing revelation. The comprehensive
| analysis of Raven's features, reporting capabilities, and
| campaign management potential equips me for data-driven
| decisions. This resource is a strategic compass, guiding me to
| optimize marketing efforts and achieve robust ROI in a dynamic
| digital landscape.
| evertedsphere wrote:
| in retrospect, sometimes don't write about what you learn about
| berniedurfee wrote:
| 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.
| LanceH wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| greenanteater40 wrote:
| I think I can speak for everyone when I say: heck yeah,
| knowledge!
| nottorp wrote:
| I believe at uni they called that 'exams' :)
| simonw wrote:
| 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/ 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
| belic wrote:
| How often do you go over these notes and review or study them?
| I don't mean ones you need and hence use, but all of them? I
| have an issue where I feel I have so many notes that I forgot
| what's in there, and sometimes I remember or find out when I
| don't need it, and I seem to lack a habit of reviewing my
| notes.
| simonw wrote:
| Some of them I remember and refer back to often. Others I
| completely forget even exist.
|
| I added "related TILs" to my site a while ago - here's a TIL
| about how I built that:
| https://til.simonwillison.net/sqlite/related-content - and as
| a result occasionally I'll post a new TIL and the related
| ones will remind me of an older one.
|
| Occasionally I'll completely forget the subject of the TIL
| itself! I was delighted to randomly stumble on this one here
| https://til.simonwillison.net/html/datalist the other day
| (after clicking my "html" tag from another TIL) which
| reminded me of the HTML datalist element, which I had
| forgotten existed.
| codeTired wrote:
| I have this odd fear that sharing what I learned today will
| make me look stupid.
|
| "Look it's 2023 this dude just learned about http error codes".
| Silly example but you get the idea.
| fasterik wrote:
| Anyone who thinks they don't have gaping holes in their
| knowledge, and criticizes others for it, is probably
| suffering from a severe case of Dunning-Kruger.
| simonw wrote:
| Yeah, if I see someone criticizing others because "that's
| so obvious, everyone knows that" the person I lose respect
| for is that critic.
| simonw wrote:
| This is one of the reasons I'm so keen on publishing this
| kind of thing - I like to make the point that you can have
| 20+ years of experience and still celebrate learning
| something basic like how to write a for loop in Bash.
|
| No-one knows everything. I respect anyone who is constantly
| learning new things, no matter how basic those things might
| be.
|
| Here's the most basic one I published recently:
| https://til.simonwillison.net/html/scroll-to-text
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Don't be afraid to take advantage of Cunningham. if you try
| asking or looking something up and it's not accessible, you'd
| be surprised how many people would come swarming once you
| start writing about it, departed to correct you ad show you
| links to valuable tribal knowledge.
| zaep wrote:
| The TIL-framing is not integral to writing and publishing
| little snippets. You can always omit a framing and stick only
| to the information.
| enjeyw wrote:
| I love this post for this exact reason:
|
| https://overreacted.io/things-i-dont-know-as-of-2018/
|
| It's written by Dan Abramov who has been instrumental in
| React's development
| stevage wrote:
| Such a great post.
| codeTired wrote:
| That is such a good read.
| p4bl0 wrote:
| Obligatory XKCD : https://xkcd.com/1053/
| hosh wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| [dead]
| lfx wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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/
| samsquire wrote:
| 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.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| 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.
| highwayman47 wrote:
| True, but at what cost?
| bmacho wrote:
| ^ 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 wrote:
| 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?
| GCA10 wrote:
| 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.
| me2too wrote:
| 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
| mabbo wrote:
| 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]
| OliverJones wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| mprovost wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| stainablesteel wrote:
| 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.
| mahathu wrote:
| Don't lecture people online on what they should or shouldn't do.
| It makes you sound like an asshole
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Somehow, you didn't take your own advice.
| [deleted]
| SanderNL wrote:
| I appreciate the irony.
| whartung wrote:
| 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.
| ioslipstream wrote:
| 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.
| benmo_atx wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| SanderNL wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| softwaredoug wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I would be inclined to agree if the author had enabled
| comments.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| In my experience I pay attention to every social media
| place my stuff gets posted. I learn a lot that way.
| 6510 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| In the 90's it struck me that the entire internet was trying to
| be page 1 of something and every article assumed the reader
| knew nothing. I optimistically hoped that, like when writing a
| book, multiple pages would be written. Something better than
| replacing the chapters of a book with domain names would
| eventually be found. Hell, books would find their way onto the
| internet as html documents.
|
| I've been wrong before.
| Decabytes wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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!
| throw1234651234 wrote:
| I just read the touch typing article. I do know what you
| mean by "people just enjoy things in a particular voice"
| and I agree with that, but I guess my main "complaint" is
| that you probably also didn't learn much from the touch
| typing article, nor introduce anything new. That sounds
| like a critique, but it's genuinely not - probably 90% of
| popular content is rehashing. I am just emphasizing that
| it's where my issue lies - to really LEARN something is
| very tedious and potentially not that interesting to the
| mass audience.
| merman wrote:
| No offense but I think you've gotten lost in your
| thoughts and wrote down a response mid-conversation with
| yourself. Your "complaint" has been responded to already.
| The author finds it useful in the moment for himself, to
| better understand the topic. The author finds it useful
| in the future, to reference. Some other people may find
| it useful, and if you are not one of those people, no
| problem. If you haven't tried this method, it's likely
| you are overly skeptical of it. It seems like you have an
| extremely high bar for anything that deserves to be
| written down - only that which is new, original
| knowledge, not written down anywhere in the total extant
| written history of humanity. There is an argument to be
| made against spam but I think you're erring on the other
| side. I honestly suggest you in particular try this
| method. It will address your underlying concern of
| "rehashing" which we are doing, right now.
| throw1234651234 wrote:
| None taken - I wanted to ensure I reply since Decabytes
| put in the effort to reply in detail. In replying "to
| reply and acknowledge the response", I was largely
| redundant. I also agree that I am likely erring on the
| side of wanting too much from articles.
| tallanvor wrote:
| This is a big part of the reason students are given homework. It
| really shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody.
| mavci wrote:
| 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/
|
| English translation: https://www-phpr-org.translate.goog/neden-
| blog-yazmalisiniz/...
| hliyan wrote:
| When you blog, the world is your rubber duck.
| BSEdlMMldESB wrote:
| 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.
| rounakdatta wrote:
| Writing about what you learnt about in bite-sized flashcard
| systems also helps enormously.
| wuliwong wrote:
| 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-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 wrote:
| Where is the best place you've found to receive this feedback?
| wuliwong wrote:
| 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.
| gjvc wrote:
| "try explaining something makes you realise how well you really
| understand it."
| comprev wrote:
| aka "rubber ducking"
| lordnacho wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| p4bl0 wrote:
| 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.
| bgun wrote:
| Not sure which came first or if it's an even older saying, but
| Mythbusters said the same thing. https://youtu.be/BSUMBBFjxrY
| winter_blue wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Absolutely! (also see the article)
| https://www.colorado.edu/artssciences-advising/resource-
| libr...
| mr_mitm wrote:
| Also, see the Feynman 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.
| beltsazar wrote:
| > When historian Charles Weiner looked over a pile of Richard
| Feynman's notebooks, he called them a wonderful 'record of
| his day-to-day work'.
|
| > "No, no!", Feynman objected strongly.
|
| > "They aren't a record of my thinking process. They are my
| thinking process. I actually did the work on the paper."
|
| > "Well," Weiner said, "The work was done in your head, but
| the record of it is still here."
|
| > "No, it's not a record, not really. It's working. You have
| to work on paper and this is the paper. Okay?", Feynman
| explained.
| nomel wrote:
| First we augment/externalized calorie storage from our fat
| cells to our livestock/crops.
|
| Then we augment/externalized our short and long term memory
| from our minds with writing.
|
| You'll always find a symbol covered napkin next to someone
| who's working out something difficult, without any writing
| paper.
| uncletaco wrote:
| Feynman was famous for stealing his coworkers' pens and
| pencils so I have to assume he was writing useful thing down.
| simonw wrote:
| See "inventor's 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).
| JJMcJ wrote:
| Though he wasn't an eminent scientist, I worked with
| someone who had gone through engineering school back in the
| 1950s. He kept volumes of meticulous notebooks and saved a
| great deal of time because he never had to waste hours on
| "I know I figured this out in October 2022 but I can't
| remember how".
|
| A real inventor's notebook today has a space to sign and
| date each page, and you should X out any space you don't
| use. That helps it have legal force.
| leksak wrote:
| > That helps it have legal force
|
| Could you elaborate on this point?
| simonw wrote:
| Presumably this is about intellectual property claims.
|
| If you get into legal issues around patents, being able
| to prove when you made notes on something could be
| important.
|
| Signing and dating each page helps demonstrate that
| you've been taking notes at specific times.
|
| Crossing out the areas of the page that you don't use
| helps in case you get accused of deliberately leaving
| blank space in your notebook so you can backfill it later
| on a page that you already signed and dated.
|
| Of course, this is predicated on the idea that you use
| pen and paper for notes! All of my notes have been
| digital for over a decade at this point.
| akkad33 wrote:
| I thought this was a myth
| wrs wrote:
| I still have the bound, page-numbered notebook issued to
| me by Microsoft in the late 90s for this exact purpose,
| along with a lecture explaining the methodology above. (A
| rather misguided effort by an IP attorney who was
| apparently new to software...)
| JJMcJ wrote:
| I saw one in a stationary catalog some years ago. It was
| exactly as you describe it.
|
| There was space for a notary seal as well. I think the
| idea was to have it notarized once every so often so that
| the notary was affirming the date on the page, and that
| location of the X-ed out areas.
| fasterik wrote:
| I wish I was better at thinking in handwritten notes. I've
| been using computers my whole life, so typing feels very
| natural to me, while handwriting feels slow and cumbersome.
| I've become pretty proficient at thinking in code and
| moving things around in text editors, but whenever I try to
| do something on paper with equations it feels like there is
| a mental block there. This has prevented me from learning
| as much math and physics as I would like to have learned.
| brabel wrote:
| Einstein was really good at thought experiments... and if I
| remember correctly, he said once that he sometimes had
| "trouble" to express thoughts in words.
| adversaryIdiot wrote:
| If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it
| well enough.
|
| Albert Einstein
| aae42 wrote:
| That's in the context of recording data from experiments,
| though
| p4bl0 wrote:
| Not only. Just like when actually coding to implement a given
| specification you find yourself refining the specification
| and discovering edge cases that weren't taken into account
| etc., when you actually start writing for other you need to
| make everything clear and to actually develop your thoughts,
| and it also "debugs the science", if I may. See also the
| concept of rubber duck debugging which is another instance of
| the same kind of effect.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| The only difference between fooling around and science is p <
| 0.05 ?
| lolinder wrote:
| It's still science even with a low p value! It's just a
| negative result instead of a positive one. Such results
| really ought to be published, even if they aren't usually.
| kuhewa wrote:
| Well, not all of them deserve to be published. But I
| understand your meaning.
| lolinder wrote:
| True, but not all positive results deserve to be
| published either!
| rchaud wrote:
| No, because p < 0.05 can be achieved by simply dropping
| inconvenient variables from the estimation model.
|
| The results dont have to be conclusive for science, they just
| have to be documented.
| Sosh101 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Yep, only when you try to teach someone do you really
| understand something.
| Einenlum wrote:
| 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.
| korp wrote:
| I don't recommend applying this technique specifically when
| reading this article, or you could become entrapped in an endless
| cycle.
| codeulike wrote:
| But it takes ages
| zer0tonin wrote:
| Learning anything properly, in general, takes ages
| simonw wrote:
| 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!
| andsoitis wrote:
| there's no shortcut to knowledge
| progrus wrote:
| Yes. And then share with the world, and who cares if anyone pays
| attention.
| sph wrote:
| 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 :-)
| 6510 wrote:
| 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.
| hoherd wrote:
| 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/
| sph wrote:
| 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.
| progrus wrote:
| This is super cool.
| SanderNL wrote:
| This is really quite neat. Love both the idea and the
| execution.
| input_sh wrote:
| And the weird thing is you'll find people that care about
| things you never expected anyone to care about.
|
| Looking through my analytics, things that gets clicks are never
| what I expected them to be. They're never what I think is the
| coolest or what I consider to be the best written. They're just
| random shit I put out there just for the sake of updating my
| website.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| 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/
| etqwzutewzu wrote:
| 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.
| eightnoteight wrote:
| 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
| dikei wrote:
| 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.
| s3ctor8 wrote:
| An old manager of mine introduced me to the concept of "not
| letting perfect get in the way of good" (presumably from the
| aphorism "Perfect is the enemy of good"). Nobody else knows
| what your version of perfect is. Your post/blog/PR etc. is
| ready already.
| matwood wrote:
| Same. I had a blog for awhile (on blogger lol), and a number of
| posts on early iOS programming. Some posts had a lot of hits
| and positive comments. The problem was that every post took me
| forever. I was so worried about having even a minor error that
| the stress caused me to stop.
|
| I'm older now and care less about what people think and have
| more wisdom that the vast majority don't care about what I
| think, so maybe I'll start up again. It would be fun to share
| my ~25 years of tech stories and experience for at least
| myself.
| tinsmith wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| worthless-trash wrote:
| A workable trick is to write smaller blog posts, come back and
| add/edit later ;)
| jsemrau wrote:
| The problem will be a useful differentiator to other tech
| blogs.
| Xymist wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I agree. Depth creates much more evergreen content than
| just "news commentary" or similar.
| sgarland wrote:
| 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/
| hodgesrm wrote:
| +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.
| sph wrote:
| Same. I want to limit myself to creating posts that are 2 or 3
| paragraphs long, but I find that when I start, I expand and
| clarify so much it becomes another long post.
|
| I always need to have an entire free afternoon to write some
| prose.
| criddell wrote:
| Are you expanding and clarifying for yourself or for others?
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Huh. I've always felt that my posts aren't big enough to
| warrant publishing. I've been working on a few posts for
| weeks now but it still feels like they're too insignificant
| to publish.
|
| Are long posts frowned upon?
| ms4720 wrote:
| Tweets get published, your posts are long enough.
| Narushia wrote:
| I have the same problem, but I also have a suggestion: write
| down the stuff just for yourself. Like personal notes. Don't
| think about publishing it anywhere. For me, this works really
| well for learning purposes. Although I would also like to
| publish some stuff, some day, maybe...
| ozim wrote:
| I'd say that is mainly an issue with people, they think it
| needs to be published.
|
| Writing becoming a chore is wrong use, because one should not
| write for "writing" and article we discuss here has nice
| points on practical use of writing for other means than
| simply "writing".
| balder1991 wrote:
| This was the solution that worked for me. I started writing
| things on Notion or Apple Notes because it's just always at
| hand. I also started to use Microsoft To Do to constantly
| write down random ideas for things to experiment after I read
| a post about training our minds to constantly come up with
| new ideas to experiment with MVPs.
| sgarland wrote:
| My blocker was in infra shaming (from myself). I had started on
| WordPress years ago on a t3.micro instance, and all was well.
| Then I wanted to self-host since I have a substantial homelab
| and at the time, was an SRE. But I knew that my K8s (k3os
| technically) cluster wasn't great, and I wasn't using Helm
| correctly, and... all of this made me think I had to get
| everything perfect, exactly how I wanted it, before I could use
| it for publishing tech opinions.
|
| A few weeks ago I found out you can have GitHub Pages with a
| custom domain, so I extracted my posts, converted them to
| Markdown, and now I run Hugo. So much easier, and I don't fret
| about what imaginary people might think about me.
| cal85 wrote:
| What made you stop fretting about that? Did you make the GH-
| hosted blog anonymous?
| sgarland wrote:
| Nope - you're welcome to see it if you'd like (but there's
| a huge gap in content, the only new stuff isn't pure tech,
| and I make no guarantees about the accuracy of the older
| content) - it's my username.dev
|
| It was purely self-loathing/projection (idk, not a
| psychologist), where I was convinced that if _I_ thought my
| setup was bad, then surely others would judge me and ignore
| the content as well. I have no idea how I snapped out of
| that absurd belief, but I'm happy I did, because I really
| enjoy writing.
| drewr wrote:
| Read the first couple of posts and found them very
| insightful. Thank you for leaving them public.
| Nezteb wrote:
| I have this exact same problem.
|
| Went from GHP/Jekyll (2012), to GHP/Hugo (2013), to GHP/Hexo
| (2014), to headless WordPress/React (2017), to Ghost (2018),
| to Netlify CMS (2019), to Vercel/Gatsby (2020), to Astro
| (2021), to custom Elixir/Phoenix (2022), to Micro.blog and
| Substack (2023)... (dates are approximate within ~6 months)
|
| I'm still debating what to do next. My motivations go back
| and forth between "learn some new tech" and "write the dang
| thing".
|
| Either way, I'd really like to stick to something for more
| than a year. Ideally I'd separate my "site" and "blog".
| CountVonGuetzli wrote:
| I've had similar issues and recently made a big step forward by
| doing one thing: I publish my posts but don't list them and
| block search engines from scraping /posts via robots.txt.
|
| It's not a safe way to hide content by any means, but is just
| enough to stop myself from worrying about what others still
| think about my writing. I can still share links with
| individuals if I want.
|
| I have been trying to get myself to write more for twenty years
| and this was the first thing that helped.
| BestGuess wrote:
| I write a lot but don't publish anything anywhere. It's kind
| of like that bo burnham song "look who's inside again". I
| feel like when I share anything I think, no matter how
| revised, detailed or not, whatever advice followed, all I
| find is "another reason to hide again". feeling like having
| too much to say is a lot like having nothing at all to say in
| that it amounts to the same thing.
| balder1991 wrote:
| I don't really worry about it. Consider so many people spend
| a lot of resources and strategies to SEO optimize, our
| hobbyist blogs are probably showing up in the 20th page of
| some random search.
| tsojer wrote:
| [dead]
| tiddles wrote:
| I'm having this problem now. I want to publish a post about
| recent months of progress on my project, but while writing it I
| found the solution isn't complete and still has some flaws, so
| I feel I must put some more weeks of work into the code first
| before I can publish the post...
|
| I'm trying to practice writing "this doesn't work yet"
| acknowledging in the post that it isn't fully done, and
| publishing the bloody thing. We will see how it works next time
| I sit down to write!
| bayindirh wrote:
| I was like that, assuming people will just throw barrages of
| virtual tomatoes to my blog posts, then I read a quote from a
| famous writer: "Your first draft will always be bad. Just
| revise" (or something similar).
|
| Then I started to write my drafts when inspiration hits without
| thinking and stopped the moment inspiration ran dry. Then
| revising/extending as I feel like it. I publish the post the
| moment it feels complete. The result is
| https://blog.bayindirh.io.
|
| The gist is, I write about what I want, for myself. It's out
| there and available. I also submit to here and send to a couple
| of friends. If I get feedback, that's nice. Otherwise, eh.
|
| Give it a try. There's no need to be blocking yourself out of
| something you might enjoy.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-08-14 23:01 UTC)