[HN Gopher] Learn in Public (2018)
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Learn in Public (2018)
Author : mooreds
Score : 54 points
Date : 2024-07-24 13:59 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.swyx.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.swyx.io)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Previous:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29142158 - November 2021 (13
| comments)
| swyx wrote:
| huh, didnt even know that one was there! ty!
| swyx wrote:
| oh wow. surprised to see this old piece here. it has certainly
| far outlasted my own expectations in terms of people quoting it
| and citing me on it on a weekly basis, even today. an updated
| chapter was rewritten for my book https://learninpublic.org/
| (which yes is a few years late in the promised V2... IT WILL
| HAPPEN)
|
| questions welcome. it has continued to reap rewards for me and
| others who follow the practice long after publication (see:
| https://latent.space/, my current implementation), which is IMO
| the best validation I can have.
| vaporary wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| I'm a senior developer. Every now and then I'll debug something
| challenging and think about doing a nice write up about it --
| but I don't have any existing online presence. I could throw a
| simple blog up on a website, but after posting an article
| there, I'm honestly not sure what to do next. Presumably at
| some point search engines will scrape it, but it likely won't
| have any meaningful search rank. I don't use social media. I
| could submit links to HN after I write each post, but that
| feels spammy and pretentious.
|
| Any thoughts on what to do with a blog post after writing it?
| susam wrote:
| My own form of _learning in public_ has been to host _book clubs_
| for the books I have been reading and then taking notes, sharing
| insights about them through blog posts, discussing them on IRC
| channels, etc. I have done two such book clubs so far. The first
| one was for _Introduction to Analytic Number Theory (Apostol,
| 1976)_ and the second one was for _Mastering Emacs (Petersen,
| 2022)_.
|
| I have the meeting logs, details, etc. for them available here:
| https://susam.net/cc/
|
| I plan to begin one more on _Galois Theory (Stewart, 2015)_ quite
| soon. I am just waiting for the hardcover book to arrive! If this
| type of thing interests you, I 'd love for you to join the
| discussion either in the IRC channel or the Matrix room linked on
| the page above.
| susam wrote:
| Addendum: For those who are interested in a wider range of
| computing topics, some of us from Libera IRC network have
| formed a computing literature reading channel named #bitwise.
| See https://bitwise.codeberg.page/ for the connection details.
| coolThingsFirst wrote:
| This is absolute horseshit.
|
| This industry is filled with peacockers who write posts about
| mundane things and it comes a race of bullshitting.
|
| It's ok to learn in private before you come to enlighten the
| whole world about your expertise.
| ubertaco wrote:
| >Whatever your thing is, make the thing you wish you had found
| when you were learning. Don't judge your results by "claps" or
| retweets or stars or upvotes - just talk to yourself from 3
| months ago. I keep an almost-daily dev blog written for no one
| else but me.
|
| >Guess what? It's not about reaching as many people as possible
| with your content. If you can do that, great, remember me when
| you're famous. But chances are that by far the biggest
| beneficiary of you trying to help past you is future you. If
| others benefit, that's icing.
|
| I feel like this is sorta counter to the "peacockers who write
| posts about mundane things", because it's very explicitly
| "these are my notes for me".
|
| You might say "why in public, then?", and I think the value
| _does_ get to "if someone else benefits" -- but admittedly,
| that requires some straining out the obvious materials (but
| really, are you that likely to keep around a blog post about
| "today I learned what public static void main(String[] args)
| means" for your own reference later?)
| dSebastien wrote:
| I do it by sharing many of my notes using Obsidian Publish:
| https://notes.dsebastien.net/
| swyx wrote:
| honestly i paid the $20/month or whatever for a long time for
| this, but i dont think anyone ever went there. publishing to
| github https://github.com/swyxio/ai-notes is more than
| sufficient.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I would strongly encourage you to share this repo as a Show
| HN post. Your notes are of a high quality and I believe there
| is substantial value in sharing for those who might be
| curious and earlier in their journey in this domain.
| swyx wrote:
| eh im kinda embarrassed by it haha. its mostly 1yr out of
| date now. want to do a complete rewrite
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Future you will thank current you for focusing on sharing
| what you have learned and can therefore teach vs being
| embarrassed it isn't tidy. Ask for help to cleanup, that
| is the journey.
|
| > Try your best to be right, but don't worry when you're
| wrong. Repeatedly. If you feel uncomfortable, or like an
| impostor, good. You're pushing yourself. Don't assume you
| know everything, but try your best anyway, and let the
| internet correct you when you are inevitably wrong. Wear
| your noobyness on your sleeve.
|
| Or did I not properly interpret this wisdom?
| swyx wrote:
| haha yes i know the irony. i have indeed asked a friend
| who wanted to apprentice w me with the cleanup but she's
| not super commited yet
| ubertaco wrote:
| I love this bit here:
|
| >The subheading under this rule would be: Try your best to be
| right, but don't worry when you're wrong. Repeatedly. If you feel
| uncomfortable, or like an impostor, good. You're pushing
| yourself. Don't assume you know everything, but try your best
| anyway, and let the internet correct you when you are inevitably
| wrong. Wear your noobyness on your sleeve.
|
| It requires an ongoing practice of humility _and_ extending grace
| to yourself for your own mistakes or misunderstandings (on the
| basis of "everyone makes mistakes and has to learn"), which can
| be a good starting point for showing that same grace to others.
| swyx wrote:
| thank you! i think also it addresses what i perceive to be the
| #1 criticism of LIP from others - that it creates a lot of
| "overnight experts" in a thing. so "wear your noobyness on your
| sleeve" is also "be honest about how new you are to a thing out
| of respect to your reader" - and if they know more than you, it
| prompts them to teach/guide rather than complain/dismiss.
| ramenbytes wrote:
| Reminds me of a favorite quote from Fahrenheit 451:
|
| > Man, when I was younger I shoved my ignorance in people's
| faces. They beat me with sticks. By the time I was forty my
| blunt instrument had been honed to a fine cutting point for me.
| If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll
| never learn.
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