Vladimir_M comments on I want to learn programming - Less Wrong

7 Post author: benelliott 26 March 2011 10:40AM

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Comment author: Vladimir_M 27 March 2011 02:52:09AM 6 points [-]

And I didn't really want to learn programming, I still don't. I want to be able to read, understand and appreciate code and algorithms in general. I don't want to become a poet, I want to be able to read and appreciate poetry.

That's like trying to understand math without ever solving any problems with your own hand. It's not a viable way to understand anything, though I suppose it may be a viable way to fool yourself into thinking that you understand things.

Comment author: XiXiDu 27 March 2011 10:17:52AM 1 point [-]

That is what I am actually doing. That's not what I meant. What I meant is that you don't have to be able to write the sequences from scratch to understand them.

Here's a phenomenon I was surprised to find: you'll go to talks, and hear various words, whose definitions you're not so sure about. At some point you'll be able to make a sentence using those words; you won't know what the words mean, but you'll know the sentence is correct. You'll also be able to ask a question using those words. You still won't know what the words mean, but you'll know the question is interesting, and you'll want to know the answer. Then later on, you'll learn what the words mean more precisely, and your sense of how they fit together will make that learning much easier. The reason for this phenomenon is that mathematics is so rich and infinite that it is impossible to learn it systematically, and if you wait to master one topic before moving on to the next, you'll never get anywhere. Instead, you'll have tendrils of knowledge extending far from your comfort zone. Then you can later backfill from these tendrils, and extend your comfort zone; this is much easier to do than learning "forwards". (Caution: this backfilling is necessary. There can be a temptation to learn lots of fancy words and to use them in fancy sentences without being able to say precisely what you mean. You should feel free to do that, but you should always feel a pang of guilt when you do.) — Ravi Vakil