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How to Learn Complex Things Quickly: A Guide
- atsushin 5y agoI've often found that "skipping the details" and learning only as much as I -need- truly is the most useful thing you can do to learn something new.
- chrisbaldauf 5y agoGlad it resonated! You have to choose where you invest your learning time or it is too easy to get overwhelmed and lost.
- dazc 5y agoYes, me too, making mistakes and finding solutions is also a great way of learning although it doesn't feel like it at the time.
- asdff 5y agoThis strategy becomes a mess when you finally learn the crippling problem was due to one of these details you've skipped. It's important to read all the documentation at least once if you can. Sometimes a lightbulb might go off that saves you a lot of time.
- thelean12 5y agoThis completely falls apart at big tech. If you read all the documentation once for all the components you're working on, you'd be out of commission for months just for your first project. Actually understanding what you're reading takes a career. Learning only what you need to is essential in this environment.
- ternaryoperator 5y agoMy experience is just the opposite: there is far too little documentation of most components and I have to scramble to places like SO and other forums to get the basic info I need. In my experience, it's principally the big enterprise packages that suffer from the problem you describe. But, of course, YMMV.
- u385639 5y agoWhile the advice is good advice overall, it stumbles on its own hindsight. > Break whatever you’re trying to learn down into use cases. Start with bite sized chunks that take a few minutes and build on them incrementally. “Learning python” is too broad. Installing python, printing hello world, installing and using a dependency, reading from a file, etc. are more well-defined, and it’s easier to know when you’re done, therefore helping to reinforce progress. Yes "learning python" is too broad, but the subtlety here is that it's usually actually "learn my first programming language", in which case it's unlikely you would understand how to break anything up into any steps. If "learning python" is not your first language then the advice is just obvious. The truth is that the only advice that matters is "don't give up" and "have the courage to learn however you want" because there is no such thing as "teaching".
- pessimizer 5y ago> it's unlikely you would understand how to break anything up into any steps. Sounds like a job for a teacher.
- PeterisP 5y agoOr a textbook writer. Seriously, if you need a decent breakdown of "Learning X" into steps, then it's useful to look at the table of contents of a related textbook even if you'd be learning from other sources (experimentation, documentation, whatever) because the split and order of topics will be at least somewhat reasonable.
- tsejerome97 5y agoI totally agree with this. This approach can work only if you have the big picture. It is a lot easier for a web development background person to learn app development as the person knows it is still a "frontend". However, it would be really really hard for me to learn Astrophysics and Quantum Physics. (would appreciate a lot if anyone can offer any advice:D)
- DickingAround 5y ago
- apples_oranges 5y agoThis reminds me of a discussion about NFTs recently. I caught myself having an opinion without really knowing how they work. So I googled it and only found vague descriptions. Then I looked for an actual ETH blockchain contract that implements NFTs on Github [1], read it, and it was all very simple and clear. (So for me it was "How to Learn complex Things Quickly by realizing they are not that complex at all.") So in some cases I'd put "Read the Source Code" at the top. Code is not quite mathematical notation, but it is a concise way to express something.. [1] I read this one: https://github.com/larvalabs/cryptopunks/blob/master/contracts/CryptoPunksMarket.sol https://github.com/larvalabs/cryptopunks/blob/master/contrac...
- jimpudar 5y agoAlso related - don't read random tutorials on "how to do X", go and find the official documentation for X and RTFM. In my experience this is the easiest and most direct way to learn any new technology.
- the_only_law 5y agoI’ve had the opposite experience. I’ve attempted to read a number of specs, and by the way I’m completely unable to parse them, you’d assume I was illiterate. On the other hand, I’ve found good, technical articles detailing how the same things worked and have found them much more digestible.
- bigwavedave 5y agoFor me personally, the answer is a combination of the two. Having the docs open side-by-side with a good technical write-up usually helps me understand a lot faster and better than either resource does on its own.
- JJMcJ 5y agoSometimes the official docs are just right. Django is good, for example. I had to do small Ubuntu sysadmin task recently, the tutorials I found were incomprehensible. The official docs were crystal clear. But we've all seen the reverse, as well, and a combination of SO, YouTube, Reddit, and random tutorials is the only way to figure it out. Especially when you encounter the "This describes version 3.1, and everything in 4.5 is completely different, good luck" official docs.
- AJRF 5y agoWhat in gods name is hubspot and how do I keep ending up on it’s website. It sounds like a CRM but they have a side hustle of producing blogposts about every topic under the sun? Edit: I just searched “hubspot blogs about everything” and had a full page of results of blogs about blogging from Hubspot. The entire page of results!
- bibinou 5y agoTheir shtick is Inbound Marketing, making clients come to you. Spamming blogposts on HN works really well for that. Works even better if it's good blogposts. edit: Dan Lyons (Fake Steve Jobs) wrote a book on his time there.
- andrei_says_ 5y agoI recommend “Disrupted” by Dan Lyons - about his time at Hubspot, about the unicorn phenomenon and the cultish culture of tech startups.
- bognition 5y agoThey're building a CRM for the mid market. Think salesforce but for small/midsized businesses. A few years back they were only focused on marketing automation and driving organic search traffic to your blog plays a big role in that (Inbound Marketing). As such they've produced a lot of content to drive traffic to their blog.
- m3kw9 5y agoWhen will I get a guide on how to learn complex ways to learn things quickly?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ergest 5y agoThe guide is ok, but I will say that nothing works better than having a problem you’re trying to solve. The rest comes naturally. I taught myself data mining (now called machine learning or data science) in a matter of months because I was trying to build a lead scoring model.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- 627467 5y agoI read this as "just do it" (sue me nike). Learn by doing something, what you are able to do will increment organically so start somewhere you can start doing.
- hyperpallium2 5y agoThe opposite of "Deep Work". Great for getting stuff done; but a poor substitute for understanding. Good for practitioners not researchers. Because a working but incorrect mental model is a terrifyingly insidious, almost impenetrable barrier to actual understanding.
- ineedasername 5y agoYes, this is, at best, a recipe for understanding how to properly use a complex tool (say LTSM networks) but by no means a mechanism by which you would gain actual understanding. And if you mistake the two, you run into the Dunning-Kruger effect, believe you know more than you do, tweak things in ways you don't completely understand, and end up with utter crap that appears to be gold.
- runningmike 5y agoNice, but imho complexity is never ever a technical problem. Solving complexity is imho more effective than learning to deal with it. So learning system thinking will always help. Some reads https://www.bm-support.org/problem-solving-methods/ https://www.bm-support.org/problem-solving-methods/ or try to use principles before building software. Like https://nocomplexity.com/documents/0complexity/abstract.html https://nocomplexity.com/documents/0complexity/abstract.html
- asimjalis 5y ago1/ Try to solve a real problem with it. 2/ Try to teach someone what you learned in 1.
- ineedasername 5y agoThis entire writeup describes the process of learning complex things to only a shallow or, at best, medium level of understanding. Following these guidelines and then believing you have a solid understanding of a complex thing is a near-perfect recipe for the Dunning-Kruger effect.
- swader999 5y agoNobody is saying this so I'll put it out. A good way to learn anything is to teach it to someone else.
- brujo 5y agoI will read it for sure but seeing Hubspot as a source sparks serious doubts about the value of this article XD