August 13, 2024
Tuesday Open Comments
I may have mentioned that I’ve been trying to learn French, and trying to learn coding. On the latter front, I’ve done quite a few free tutorials online, and some have been helpful, particularly the ones that involve a lot of repetition in the form of free play.
One theory for what works well, based on personal observation, is that we learn by noodling on a skill. Getting a bag of tools and reading books or watching videos about how to do something with them is much, much less valuable than using the tools and learning what they do, how they work, and (eventually) how to use them to create something original.
When it comes to language learning, I find DuoLingo very good, despite its frustrations and shortcomings. Why? Because if you use it daily, it forces you to repeat and repeat and repeat using the language, but you repeat it in ways that vary the grammar bit by incremental bit. This helps learning vocabulary and grammar quite effectively, although it can at times seem arduous.
Arduousness is part of the learning experience. It is to be expected, and it isn’t harmful as long as you have more positive experiences than just the frustrating bits.
Anyway. On the coding front, I followed some online recommendations and wound up obtaining A Smarter Way to Learn JavaScript by Mark Myers. His Smarter Way series of four books consist of short reading chapters paired with online practice drills that take three or more times longer to work through than the reading. It is the familiar method of repetition and noodling and play, in many ways.
He has a newsletter, which he may have quit posting to, but I found the one entry summarized the philosophy nicely. Besides, it’s inspiring to read about someone who started learning to code at age 70, like Mark did, when you find yourself wondering if over 50 is too old for it. Nonetheless, his approach is one that I wish more self-directed learners and course designers would take to heart. For me, at least, it works much better than any other. There are limits on how much you can gain from watching a master do his or her magic. The skills don’t really sink in and take hold until you’ve had a chance at the workbench yourself.
The essay link: Don’t blame yourself for quitting. Self learning can be hell.
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Good morning. It's Tuesday here. There's a lot of yuck on the outside of the sliding door in the kitchen from the storm last week. I need to clean it, so the outdoors doesn't look gloomy all the time.
Good morning. Another unseasonably cool morning with highs later in the 80s. But my calendar still says August, not September.
The mothership is covering unrest in Bangladesh.