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Comment by sagefy | Hacker News Reader

Author here, happy to answer any questions :)

Can you shed more light on doing one thing at a time? Is this about removing distractions while you're trying to learn or is this as much about picking one topic to learn at a time? IE don't try to learn to play the piano and learn to speak Chinese in parallel? My assumption is that section 1 is about the small distractions but I was also wondering if the research indicates anything for multiple courses of study in parallel.

Thanks for reading and for the question :)

You definitely can, and probably already are, learning multiple things in parallel in the scope of weeks or months. You want to make sure you have time to commit to each of those things. You probably only have about 3-5 hours a day of full effort to expend. So I wouldn't go beyond three or so different subjects in the same overall interval.

In the moment, you want focus. If you tried to learn to play piano using scores written in Chinese as an attempt to learn both at the same time, you'd probably overwhelm yourself. In the moment, the more specific and focused you can get the better. So maybe its a specific piano technique, like arpeggios in major scales. Or the Chinese characters for colors. The more you can remove distractions and break down what you're learning into smaller parts, the faster you're going to learn both in the short term and long term.

As someone researching CS Education, what are your thoughts on understanding something vs. knowing how to do something (the generally accepted Western vs. Eastern education debate)? Playing music and music theory are two separate domains that help demonstrate the other but are ultimately separate domains; I think some of CS's current struggles with retention stem from which version gets taught by bootcamps and academia.

Thanks for reading and the question :)

I'm inclined to agree that being able to recognize and recall information is a different (and often prerequisite) skill from applying the same information. Bloom's taxonomy https://bit.ly/1KRj4ZH is the way I think about it: recall/recognition, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation of the same piece of knowledge are all distinct skills. You have to teach or seek to learn each separately... its not automatic that learning one gives you the other skills. (There's been some criticism of the taxonomy. But I'm not sure I've seen a better model.)

The latter part of your question, about academic v practical education in CS programs... I'm not familiar with the research about what improves retention in academic programs. That said, the more you can align and connect to someone's values and beliefs -- what gives them purpose -- they more motivated they are to learn.

> 1.1 Account for the limits of working memory

Tanking in consideration how much information your brain can hold in given moment, what is the maximum amount of study hours you should have per day?

Any estimates on when you will have sagefy web application relatively ready. I signed up, but not much is usable...

Thanks for the response :) You can try out my electronic music course to see how the site works currently: https://sgef.cc/emus I'd love some feedback too if you have the time to try it out. https://sgef.cc/feedback or here on Hacker News is good too.

It's been a long, iterative development process. I started back in April 2013, had the first go live in January 2016. Since then its been iterating and improving the software, getting feedback and making updates as I go. I'm a bit limited in how much time I get to spend on it due to having a full-time job. Getting more content is at the top of my list ( https://sgef.cc/wanthelp ). I really want to show what Sagefy -- and these learning ideas -- can do :)

Thanks again, cheers!

From a quick look at the Sagefy code, it seems you've written your own web framework, including your own database layer. Was there a particular reason you didn't use a framework like Django?

Thanks for checking it out and for the question :) I originally started in Flask. I started out using quite a number of libraries, but got a little frustrated back then when I didn't totally grok how the pieces all worked together. And Python 3 then didn't quite have the same support it does today. WSGI was simple enough to understand, so I started from there https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0333/

I've started looking into migrating the services from Python to Golang to make deployments easier. We'll see how it goes :)

Embarking on a complete rewrite just to make deployment easier seems odd -- deploying Python code might be trickier than code in some other language, but it's not that hard.

I'm curious whether or not you see music as a distraction. I do; many people don't seem to.

Thanks for reading :) I remember Ruth Clark in "Building Expertise". Here's some of the sources she cites:

- Moreno, R., & Mayer R.E. (2000a). A coherence effect in multimedia learning: The case for minimizing irrelevant sounds in the design of multimedia instructional messages. Journal of Educational Psychology, 92(1), 117–125.

- Gibbons, C. (2007, December 29). Professionals take work out of their workplaces. The Arizona Republic, D1.

- Kenz, I., & Hugge, S. (2002). Irrelevant speech and indoor lighting: Effects of cognitive performance and self-reported affect. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 15, 709–718.

- Ransdell, S.E., & Gilroy, L. (2001). The effects of background music on word processed writing. Computers in Human Behavior, 17, 141–148.

The studies here seem to suggest most people learn better in quiet most of the time.

That said, I listen to music without lyrics myself while learning :)

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