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Learning to Learn

(kevin.the.li)
320 points jklm | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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setgree ◴[] No.41914724[source]
Something from Andrej Karpathy on learning that stuck with me [0]:

> Learning is not supposed to be fun. It doesn't have to be actively not fun either, but the primary feeling should be that of effort. It should look a lot less like that "10 minute full body" workout from your local digital media creator and a lot more like a serious session at the gym. You want the mental equivalent of sweating. It's not that the quickie doesn't do anything, it's just that it is wildly suboptimal if you actually care to learn.

[0] https://x.com/karpathy/status/1756380066580455557?lang=en

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zer0tonin ◴[] No.41915657[source]
This is complete bs.

I've learned 2 languages to fluency by mostly watching movies. I've learned the linux cli by setting up a minecraft server for my friends in high school. I've learned programming by making IRC (and later Discord) bots for communities I was part of.

All of this was fun, and it worked better than staring at a textbook and hoping that my "effort" pays off.

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1. Arisaka1 ◴[] No.41918152[source]
>I've learned the linux cli by setting up a minecraft server for my friends in high school.

What you've learned was "enough to set up a minecraft server", but definitely not as much as "learned the linux cli", and that's without even touching the obvious question "what does someone mean when they claim they learned the linux cli"?

I fell for this trap too: I watched a tutorial by Nick Chapsas, then made my own ASP.NET Core Web API for a personal project, and thought "Wow I know ASP.NET MVC time to get a junior developer job".

After a few resumes (there's .NET demand in my area) I landed an interview with a startup. The interviewer (who happened to be the cofounder and has 15 years of .NET experience, some working directly in Microsoft) started hitting me with questions like "what kind of objects can get constructed in a using block?", "what's the difference between readonly and const", "how can we identify that a payload comes from a mobile client if the endpoints are shared?", etc.

That's when I realized that I knew enough to make me go "woohoo I have a .NET Core web API" but not enough to get a junior job. In fact, he was honest enough to tell me "you're barely entry level, and this wasn't even the technical interview it's just the screener".

Off-topic but related with the event: I obviously didn't get the job, but he left me with an advice I'm actioning: "Stop jumping around and stick to one language, I don't know if that's gonna be C#, TypeScript, Go, Python, whatever. Deep dive something well. You're only hurting yourself in the long run".

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2. zer0tonin ◴[] No.41922814[source]
Watching tutorials is exactly what I would consider "not fun", and I'm not surprised it wasn't successful. On my side I had no problem getting into a software engineering career, so my point stands.