My notes on learning. In particular through the lense of reaching mastery.
(link)[http://norvig.com/21-days.html]
Becoming a programming in 10 years. Learning by doing. Echoes deliberate practice learnings, but in a less anal way.
It boils down to: code a lot, do things that challenge you.
There's not much more to it, seen from this lense. Remember: most organic "problems" boil down to a few factors that determine the outcome. 1 or 2, not much more, in the general case.
mn poins out that there are two factors that determine learning. I.e. necessary and probably sufficient conditions for learning to takae place.
- Desire.
- Environment.
I largely agree with him. A lot of what is wrong with traditional schooling is the "desire" part, and for someone taking an autodidact approach, like me, it's the second part that is challenging.
What does this imply? Learn things which you want to learn, i.e. pull rather than push, and get into the right environment. This is why programs such as Hacker School are so successfully - they are qualitatively different from your average CS education. It also explains the "Florence paradox" very well.
This is something pg has written about. Most of the best work in a field is done early one. This seems to be true for many things - see Greek philosophers, Russian authors etc. Golden/Silver age of X.
- How general is this? Can we find some patterns through various domains? How are they connected?
(How to read a paper)[http://blizzard.cs.uwaterloo.ca/keshav/home/Papers/data/07/paper-reading.pdf]