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Comment by nritchie | Hacker News Reader

Not true for everyone. I learned Rust from The Rust Programming Language ("The Rust Book") and "Rust for Rustaceans." Sure, coming from C/C++, I could have learned the syntax online but learning best idioms and styles required the time and commitment to read a book cover-to-cover. In fact, I've probably read each page in "Rust for Rustaceans" at least twice to ensure that I understood some of the more subtle points. I could have developed a half-baked notion of how the borrow-checker worked by fooling around and reading blurbs on Stack Exchange. But Rust for Rustaceans made clear the more subtle points that might have taken years of tinkering to understand. Thank goodness people still write excellent books on computer programming.

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I have a gut feeling that human as a creature learns better when looking at the information from several different angles, both physically and mentally. Been physically I mean looking at the same concept on screen and on hard copy books, perhaps taking notes and mark relevent sentences with a highlighter. Similarly, seeing a concept on physical book and write some short code snippet is viewing the concept from different mental angles. Though I don't have a proof for that and have yet to find a formal research on this topic.

I learn the same way but there are different people who learn in different ways. Also some people come with some concepts already understood from past experience or education, it’s easier for to pick things up without needing various angles.

The pedagogy suggests that you retain more when you also have a spatial element to what you are reading - eg you recall not only what the text was but where exactly on the page you read it, and perhaps also how far through the book it was.

Textbook designers know this and use images, callout boxes and insets with case studies/graphs to break up text on pages so that your brain gets extra context to map 'what' to 'where'.

This is (imo) why infinite scroll and mixed order algorithm feeds are such brainrot (even if you are looking at educational content). You try to recall something you read but it was in an ephemeral location in an always changing stream of content.

The solution explorer from Visual Studio flashes into my mind when I think about the codebases I'm most familiar with, and thinking about the code makes the code file come to mind like it's a big piece of paper and it's all represented physically in some form in my mind. I wonder if the way this happens acts like something of an exploit to get those physical textbook benefits.

This is true: a way to remember things is to construct a “memory palace” in a place you know well, where different pieces of information correspond to different locations inside the building.

> I have a gut feeling that human as a creature learns better when looking at the information from several different angles

Ever write a piece of code, pore over each line, test the hell out of it, and only when you actually submit the PR and see the diff rendered in your review tool that you spot some totally bone-headed thing you've done?

Viewing a familiar concept in a new context gives you new insights with surprising frequency. Context shifts the priors in the mind. That's why, yes, combining reference/LLMs/tutorials and comprehesive pedagogic tours on rails gives you the best perspective on a new domain.

(BTW: it's due to this effect that company offsites and retreats are good investments, not wastes of money.)

The brain is a large network and humans learn best when an information doesn't life in isolation but can be integrated within.

Absolutely. Whenever I learn a new thing I'll always approach it from different angles - sources from people with varying skill levels (it can be useful to know how another beginner dealt with something!), video form, written text, reading the theory, seeing the applications, trying it yourself in various forms, different constraints etc. For example, since we're on hn - writing some data structure or algorithm you're learning in a few different languages. Doing all this helps massively with building up to true understanding.

(cooking - when learning a new recipe, I'll always find a few versions from reliable sources to compare, see what they have in common, and try to understand the reasoning behind differences)

Getting a book is my goto to learn anything new. I taught myself PHP and ended up finding a book 4 years later when I was looking for an answer to something. On the next page was something that would have saved me tons of time so I read the whole book.

Since then I’ve read books on Ruby, Go, Elixir, Docker, K8s and a lot more. By far the best way to get a semi complete understanding of anything without scraping together data from the internet yourself, because you won’t easily know the gaps.

- PAIP - The Art of of the Metaobject Protocol - Modern C

Those alone are the ones I've been re-reading this year.

paip=Paradigms of AI Programming

My method is to get some hands-on experience first with the technology: Tutorials, Getting Started pages, the first chapter of a book. The fumble for some time and getting exposed to various sources of information. Then I take a book and skim it from start to cover, stopping at interesting bits. Then I reread various parts.

Sometimes I start with reading the books. But I already known I won't retain anything deeply. But it will gives me all the right keywords to learn more about the technology.

It always amaze me when I see fellow programmers struggle with problems that could have been solved easily by just reading that introductory book on the subject.

It was my first book and introduced me to the No Starch Press aesthetic no other line has managed to replicate.

I came here to say almost the same thing. I've been learning rust in my free time because I don't do enough programming at work to scratch that itch any more, and I've been using the rust book as a reference.

Thanks for the rec for "rust for rustaceans" I'll have a look into it.

I've only been using chatgpt for points where i'd normally go ask another dev for another set of eyes to debug something, otherwise all my learning and doing has been mostly the rust book, crates, and blogs about rust, ecs, roguelikes etc etc. It's been so fun!

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