Ways to learn something new in software development: Tutorials, Training, Classes
Ways to learn something new in software development: Tutorials, Training, Classes
Continuous Learning is key to most fields and Software Development is no different. But, how you go about doing it might end up making all the difference.
In the video, the speaker discusses effective learning methods, emphasizing the importance of active engagement over passive observation. Drawing parallels to learning to drive, they highlight the necessity of hands-on experience and critical thinking. The speaker encourages learners to question and understand concepts thoroughly, rather than merely following tutorials. They suggest contextualizing learning by relating concepts to practical scenarios and collaborating with others for problem-solving. Additionally, the transcript advocates for the use of online resources and tools, stressing the significance of coding alongside tutorials. Lastly, the speaker urges learners to personalize their learning approach, considering individual preferences and skills, while also promoting engagement with educational materials from snowpal.com.
Summary
Introduction to Learning Methods:
Discussing the effectiveness of training and tutorials.
Acknowledging individual differences in learning styles.
Learning by Observation vs. Doing:
Drawing parallels to learning to drive.
Emphasizing the importance of hands-on experience.
Exploring the benefits and limitations of pairing sessions.
Absorption and Application of Knowledge:
Highlighting the necessity of active learning.
Encouraging critical thinking and questioning.
Reflecting on the analogy of watching movies and understanding concepts.
Contextualizing Learning:
Advising learners to relate concepts to practical scenarios.
Suggesting collaborative problem-solving approaches.
Utilizing Learning Tools:
Recommending the use of online resources and tools.
Stressing the significance of coding alongside tutorials.
Personalized Learning Approach:
Acknowledging individual learning preferences and skills.
Encouraging learners to evaluate their learning progress.
Conclusion:
Reiterating the importance of active learning.
Encouraging engagement with educational materials.
Podcast
Transcript
0:01
Hey there. In this video, let's talk a little bit about training, tutorials, etcetera, and just discuss what are some of the things that tend to work and what are some things that may not work as nicely. Now again, it's different for everybody, just like most things in life are.
0:17
But, you know, hopefully these insights make some difference and add some value to your learning. So, let's take some examples, right? Let's say you're learning to drive. You sit next to a driver, you learn, you kind of observe them, and you find out what they're doing right and what you should look out for and stuff.
0:34
And it's pretty useful, no denying that. But no matter how long you do that, the day you sit in the driver's seat and you do it yourself, you're going to realize, "Oh, you know, what things that I thought I had gotten answers to, I've probably not gotten answers to them yet," or you're bound to discover new things. We all know that. We've all been through that phase of life, almost all of us, by watching this video. You probably have gone through that similarly, right? You know, you have to do the training, not just watch somebody else do it.
1:10
Now you can certainly pair with someone who's a little bit more familiar with that particular topic or maybe not. Maybe they're just as new as you are. It doesn't matter. So you can collaborate and learn through the process, but what it means is each of you has to put yourself in the driver's seat every so often. Much like pairing sessions, pairing is good in some cases, not in all cases. When it makes sense to you, do it. Otherwise, when you need the space to think by yourself, you just do it by yourself. That's fine.
1:43
If you can split the work in the training sessions so you do spend some time, you go through the tutorials or whatever your way of learning is. We hardly ever go through tutorials. We just don't have the patience with it. We just start doing it, and then when we stumble into issues, we go look up help. But different people do it differently, and I completely appreciate that.
2:01
But with that said, let's say that's one thing, right? But that's almost pretty much the obvious where I think things don't go so well, where people are expecting it to go well and they're not sure why. Here's my opinion on that. Let me state the problem first. Let's take a movie, right?
2:16
Let's take, you know, just because I love movies. My favorite director is Christopher Nolan, right? So let's take one of his movies from like 10 years ago, Inception, which I'm sure as much as it is about dreams, it happens to come in as nightmares because you're not even sure if you understood those dreams correctly.
2:34
Anyways, so let's say you're watching that movie and you sat through the two or 2 1/2 hours. Or maybe it's even 3 hours. I don't recall. You would understand. You probably followed through the dialogues. You feel like you understood the movie, right? But then you walk out of the theater and you're not so sure anymore what happened to the ring, blah, blah, blah.
2:52
Is it the ring or am I confusing that with Sixth Sense? I think there's a ring in this one too, right? It's one thing to sort of understand what's happening immediately. It's yet another to understand it collectively, right? It's like the totality of what you're learning, what you're watching, what you're seeing, what you're hearing. You might understand them sometimes in pieces and parts, but not as a whole.
3:31
And here's what I mean by that, right? You could go through these tutorials sometimes, go through the practice, and then keep following what it tells you to do and not sort of digest it, question it, understand it, agree or disagree or whatever, right? And then go through the whole process of the tutorial. You would have spent like a whole session. Sometimes people spend like days and weeks on it. If you have that much patience, more power to you. I probably couldn't do that more than a session, if that at all, right? Without writing some code that's associated with that.
4:05
But even going through the sessions and I come out of it, you feel like you have a hang of the language, the stack, whatever it is that you learned. And then you start to write your first line of code yourself. You're like, "Oh, you know what? I'm not so sure. Where do I start? Is it a def? Is it a func? Is it a... you know, is it a function as a whole word? What does this language support?" So you're not sure because the tutorial didn't let you. It didn't seep into you, right? You didn't absorb your learning. And that's why I took this example of the movie where you understand the dialogues independently. So, but they're not the entire movie, right? It's again Sixth Sense is another example where you could have followed through everything but really didn't come out of the movie understanding the ending or something.
5:10
What you need to do when you go through these tutorials, you know, whether you're doing it by yourself or with a team member, with your co-worker, take it, understand it instead of relating it to a problem that you currently have, what you might have in the future, or the one you're going to be working on for whatever it is that you're learning about. Right? Then it'll give you context. "Hey, you know what? How would I use this when I send a message to an existing group conversation in a snopal API? If that's where I want to use this construct, what would I be using in that scenario?" And then you have a conversation, you're like, "Yeah, maybe I would do it this way."
5:44
Just write a couple of few lines of code and depending on what the tutorial is about, try to provide context to what it means in the context of what we are building, what we've built, what we're building, what we will be building in the future. And then we figure out, okay, we try to go to Go Playground and you can write a few lines of code and hit run and you figure out what happens, right?
6:02
So there's plenty of tools available today that were not there in the past. Whether you're doing JavaScript or whether you're doing, whether it's YAML or whatever it is that you're doing, JSON, you can find one that you like. There's always more than one option. Just try to write a little bit more code alongside following the tutorial.
6:18
If all that you do is follow what the tutorial tells you to do, then it would literally be no different from watching Inception and getting out of it thinking you know it well enough and not
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