Learn to Learn

Being a responsible speaker, I have started preparing my talk — — for months ahead of time! When I first came up with the idea for this talk, I asked on Twitter if anyone else thought it was a good idea. Phil made a great point about including some information on how I go about learning a new language. A tour of the language landscape NDC Oslo I came across this TEDx talk by a while back and found it useful in helping me formulate a learning strategy that works for me. Josh Kaufman Truth about the 10,000 hours rule In the talk, Josh debunked the often misquoted 10,000 hours rule. When the study was first published, the finding was that it takes . But through a collective Chinese whisper the message was warped into ‘it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to be good at something’. 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to reach the top of an ultra-competitive field Instead, Josh found that researches suggest is all it takes for you to be reasonably good at something so long you make those hours count. 20 hours This is important, because for us busy programmers — who, by the way, have a tendency to work long hours — the time to learn new skills is both limited and necessary given how fast our industry moves. 4 steps to learn proposed these 4 steps to learning anything. Josh Deconstruct the skill Most things we consider as skills are actually bundles of skills. The more we are able to break them up into smaller skills the better we can decide which of them actually helps us achieve what we want out of our learning. We can then prioritise the skills that are most useful to us and improve our ability in the least time possible. For learning a programming language, you can deconstruct most languages into smaller chunks: variable assignment common data types control flows (if-else, loops, recursions, etc.) working with collection types working with strings error handling concurrency … Most introductory books and tutorials follow this structure already. Learn enough to self-correct You should first focus on getting to the point where you can self-correct and self-edit as you learn. For learning a programming language, I interpret this point as: know how to compile and run your code able to put simple programs together, and tweak it to start getting a ‘feel’ of it Again, most introductory books and tutorials follow this pattern already and have you build a example very early on. Hello World Remove practice barriers Remove distractions — TV, internet, twitter, etc. — so that you can focus on learning. This can be hard when distractions are all around us and so readily available! I once heard a story about that, before a new project, he’d check in to a hotel with a bunch of good books and literally cut himself off from the outside world for days so he can soak up the ideas and inspirations before starting any work on the project. John Carmack I’m not saying that you should do the same, obviously different approaches work for different people. Personally I’m most effective between the hours of 10PM and 2AM because my wife goes to bed early and I’m able to just zone out. I’m not a heavy user, or any other social network for that matter, so they’re not a problem for me. Twitter On the other hand, comic-based TV shows is my poison — , , , , etc. To limit the amount of disruption these bring, I binge watch them in one night so I can have the rest of the nights that week for more constructive uses. The Flash Gotham Arrow Agents of SHIELD Practice at least 20 hours Josh raised a good point that, for most things you learn, there is a — the moment when we become and realise how little we know and how much more we need to learn. frustration barrier consciously incompetent It’s not a great feeling as no one likes to feel stupid, and this is often the point where we lose our momentum and derail our hard-earned progress. Which is why it’s important that we of our time, so that if and when we hit this frustration point we have a good reason to push on since we already budgeted 20 hours anyway. pre-commit at least 20 hours Set your goal Before you start investing a minimum of 20 hours into learning a new language, it helps if you could decide what you want to get out of the process. Depending on your situation and needs this could be quite different, e.g. are you looking to move to a different language stack and trying to make yourself employable? are you trying to understand the hype around a new language and see what it’s all about? … Personally, most of my learning is aimed at expanding my horizon and allowing me to see beyond the possibilities and options I have at my disposal with the stack that I work with day-to-day. Other times I might have specific goals of what I want to be able to do in that new language, for instance: as a replacement to JavaScript for my web development needs I learnt Dart to be better acquainted with functional-reactive programming (FRP) and with the aim of being able to using FRP I learnt Elm make games Prioritise learning a new paradigm One mistake that I see many people make is to . For example, making the jump from C# to Java is a relative easy one, but at the end of day you have learnt a new syntax without necessarily taught yourself a new way to solve problems. choose to learn a new language over a new paradigm Learning a new paradigm on the other hand, fundamentally change the way you see programming and allow you to see new ways to solve problems. From personal experience, each time I ventured into a new paradigm — , , , etc. — has allowed me to see programming in a new light. Functional Programming Aspect-Oriented Programming Functional Reactive Programming If you’re interested in exploring some less travelled roads, check out these . three paradigms recommended by John Croisant These by Bruce Tate are also a great source for exploratory learning: two books And finally, I leave you with a great quote from none other than Alan Perlis. A language that doesn’t affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing. – Alan Perlis Happy learning! Links Don’t learn a syntax, learn to change the way you think TEDx — the first 20 hours — how to learn anything | Josh Kaufman 3 mind-blowing paradigms from StrangeLoop Evan Czaplicki on different kinds of FRP at StrangeLoop 14 4 stages of competence