How does anyone learn anything? | Hacker News Reader

How does anyone learn anything?

7 pointspaulpauper7 comments

This is sorta a broad question, but how does anyone learn anything that is complicated or technical of nature? Even simple things are sprangly hard, like finding the correct formula to manipulate data in a spreadsheet a certain way. Online tutorial and guides may only answer some question or cover certain things and not be useful for specific problems. Overflow and exchange sites users get mad when questions are two trial or poorly worded, but part of the poor wording comes from the fact you don't have enough knowledge to be able to articulate the problem well. Some tutorials do not cover the level of abstraction you need answered and it is not possible to infer the correct answer. So how does one get out of this rut and actually become good at something when guides are so poor and ad-filled (Google is becoming increasingly useless as well for finding things due to spam) and people unhelpful? Other tutorials are useless and do not work when following steps.

What do you want to learn? Try top down approach. Meaning if you want to build electronics, start broad, get Arduino, run sample code, get it to do things, then dive into details only if it's necessary. In my opinion, it's useless to memorize bunch of equations, it doesn't come up as often as you think, and eventually you'll forget about them. Don't get discouraged, feel free to email me for more tips. I also write about my learning process in case it helps anyone: https://sayingless.substack.com

Regarding spam "uBlock Origin" should help https://ublockorigin.com/ There are search engines that respect your privacy. Here's two, Qwant https://www.qwant.com/ Ecosia https://www.ecosia.org/

I'd like to add on to this post to request any advice from/for ADHD peoples. I'm interested in web dev and cybersecurity, but struggle to learn anything.

One thing that I've found helpful is the "Learning how to learn" course. It's free, teaches how most brains learn, develop, and retain memories.

1. Desire - what do you want to accomplish?

2. Research - what is required to accomplish your goal? Can you find similar examples?

3. Build - pick the smallest part of the goal and try to make it work.

4. Repeat, with smaller and more iterative goals.

If there are no tutorials, find something similar, reverse engineer it (or read the source of available), and try to copy it.

I am starting to use ChatGPT as my guide rather as an answer to my problem. AI can easily help clean your thoughts and direct you in the right direction. ChatGPT could also help in wording questions that you could ask to professionals you know or through forums.

That's the thing with the tutorial and fast fix environment we are in. If you have exactly the same use case as them you are fine otherwise you are just lost because you don't know the basics.

People learn from people. Not from guides or even books.

This is why traditional universities will always be a thing.

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