The learning process is something that intrigues me for a long time now.
Are we learning properly?
Does it have to take so long to learn a new skill from the ground up?
The inspiration for this post came from the video Making Badass Developers by Kathy Sierra, it resonated a lot with some ideas I had myself, but I have never seen them so well presented and backed up by the scientific method.
The description of the video sure resonates a lot with almost every developer out there:
Every moment of every day there’s a new language, framework, format, protocol to learn. Nobody has a more dynamic skill set than a web developer. […]
When learning something new is very easy to get caught in a crazy net of resources and information that gives you more confusion than helps.
It is extremely hard to separate signal from noise.
The best way to start and grow on some new discipline is by having exposure to hundreds of examples in that field.
You need to have both high-quality and high-quantity examples.
But just as important, these examples have to be delivered in a very short time window.
Why is that you may ask?
The most powerful thing a human brain can do is to recognize patterns.
You don’t have to explain to a child what a mug is, you show two or three examples of mugs and they ‘just know’ what a mug should look like.
If you need to recognize more complex situations, you just need more examples.
Don’t get stuck repeating that CRUD for the 100th time.
Pick a topic, practice it a couple of times and then move forward to the next level.
Expose yourself to the most diverse, to the point, quality examples you can find, in a short time frame, in a good amount.
Your brain will automatically adapt to match patterns similar to those you’ve experienced.