Ask HN: How Do You Learn?
The hard way.<p>Actually a few processes that are combined depending on the domain.<p>(1) Reading.  At this I am relentless.  I used to read technical documentation (say the manual for the Spring framework or maven) on a tablet while doing cardio at the gym.<p>If at all possible I like to know the official documentation for whatever toolset I am using like the back of my hand.  I learn how to find answers quickly in,  say,  the Python manual, and avoid wasting time with Google, Stack Overflow, Spam Blogs and other places you find wrong answers.<p>In some cases there is no official documentation,  it is not good,  or it is a book you buy.  (Buy Hickey&#x27;s book on Clojure!)<p>Lately I hurt my leg and had more time to read,  I so read enough books about love that I had to take a break and read trashy SF instead.  This project has had the structure &quot;Read book A&quot;,  &quot;Scan the references in Book A,  get references (from 5-80%) from the library,  look at the areas in the stack close to the references,  read those,  repeat.&quot;  This project is unusual because it has a high fraction of fiction mixed in with the non-fiction.<p>(2) Doing.  Here it is a matter of having a gradient of tasks.  I hate to break it to you but spaced repetition, flashcards,  etc. are useless when it comes to math.  Instead you solve problems.<p>About a year ago I challenged myself to print something on an inkjet printer every day to keep it from drying out.  I had no idea how that this would turn out,  the kind of problems that I would run into (I felt I hit a &quot;crisis&quot; of some kind every two months),  that I was developing for the metaverse before people started talking about the metaverse,  or that with 15 cents of materials I could make somebody spend $1500 (not by causing property damage!)<p>For a while I made prints of anime characters and then art reproductions,  now my main activity is developing a repeatable workflow for photos I take myself.  Personally I find it a &quot;hard problem&quot; that there is &quot;something missing&quot; in the prints I make from my camera but I realized I couldn&#x27;t fix this problem one print at a time but it was something I&#x27;d get after doing a long series of them.