Learn By Not Copying

Entrepreneurship Journal Day6: Applying Ultralearning Principle #5 — Retrieval — to learning how to code

Screenshot by Author

As mentioned in the journal two days ago, I committed myself to the habit of learning and sharing what I learn about 1) app development, and 2) Medium, everyday for the next week. So here we go, new edition today.

What have I learned about app development today?

Ultralearning Principle #5: Retrieval

• As pointed out in a recent WSJ bestselling book, Ultralearning, “Rapidly changing fields … mean that professionals need to constantly learn new skills and abilities to stay relevant”, and “Your deepest moments of happiness don’t come from doing easy things; they come from realising your potential and overcoming your own limiting beliefs about yourself”.
• The author encourages everyone to pursue personal learning projects. He summarises 9 principles for learning fast and well. The 5th of these is Retrieval. It refers to the act of free recall, where you read or watch something you want to learn, then you close off all references and try to reproduce it.
• Comparing to three other ways of learning, review a single time, review repeatedly, and concept mapping, free recall is found to perform the best.
• A popular way to learn coding online is to code along, where you watch instructions and effectively learn by copying the code you see in the video tutorial. This turns out to run against the principle of retrieval. So what should retrieval look like in this context?
• I am continue to learn Swift with Angela Yu today, and really enjoyed the lessons. Because it was all about retrieval! For example, in the title picture, we were shown how to build the Dicee app, then given the challenge to create a new Ask-The-8-Ball app on our own, permitting all our individual creativity for layout and graphics. Even within the Dicee app, we were first shown coding of the left side dice, then left to code out the right side dice for ourselves. It had been effective and fun!
• As the author of Ultralearning, Scott H. Young, would put it in a quote,

“It pays better to wait and recollect by an effort from within, than to look at the book again.” — William James, pychologist

• And was it Steve Jobs or Picasso, who said,

“Good artists copy, great artists steal.”

• Finally returning to the master instructor, Angela had put it this way,

“Most of the programming skills are gained in the challenges rather than the tutorials. It’s when you’re using your new-found programming skills to bend the app to your will that you’re truly levelling up as a developer.”

• Right, roger, minimum copying today hehehe… Really appreciate her tips too, to debug by backtracking to where it last worked, and that, “Right now, don’t aim for 3 Michelin stars. Aim for edible.” Yeah, happy with the taster today =)
• (P.S. Minor suggestion Angela, where is the answer “42” in the 8 Ball machine? Or should we create it ourselves hahaha… Ok, I shall give it a go.)

What have I learned about Medium today?

• I am a new user to Medium as of 7 days ago. How did I get onto Medium?
• Even I have to think a little about how that happened. It was one of those things that kind of just happened rather than by intention.
• I was trying to share something hopefully useful from a recent learning experience. I wrote down a few points. I created an article on LinkedIn. But the writing and publishing experience there was somehow unsatisfying, not sure exactly how, just the way it felt. I was then reminded that I liked the way Medium looked and felt on the odd occasion I saw an article from the platform. I crossed over to check it out. And immediately signed up.
• As mentioned, by Day 3, I somehow became a writer for the Medium publication — The Innovation. During the process, I realised I had better get to know this place a bit since I now end up writing for it… hehehe…
• So, what do I discover today about Medium? Who are the people here, and what are they into? The Top 10 Active Medium Publications of 2020 are,

1. The Startup, Followers: 642,574, Growing by: 467 per day
2. Mission.org, Followers: 545,779, Growing by: 85 per day
3. Personal Growth, Followers: 484,876, Growing by: 156 per day
4. The Economist, Followers: 415,685, Growing by: 15 per day
5. Startup Grind, Followers: 413,177, Growing by: 92 per day
6. Towards Data Science, Followers: 409,707, Growing by: 498 per day
7. Better Humans, Followers: 374,099, Growing by: 193 per day
8. The Coinbase Blog, Followers: 374,015, Growing by: 162 per day
9. UX Collective, Followers: 357,141, Growing by: 243 per day
10. UX Planet, Followers: 255,276, Growing by: 155 per day

• Think I might just as well have stumbled upon my favourite place somehow =) The things you never know…