In the past what might happen is: I buy a textbook that seems to have good reviews about what I want to know more about, then I try and read it and can get barely through a chapter. Then I try other chapters that I may be more interested in and the same thing happens again. Then the fat book ends up on the bookshelf gathering dust. Time passes and the technology has moved on and it's obsolete, or I'm never going to use that technology and lost all drive about it.
The reasons for that are because the information is technically difficult to understand, and to know about it properly, I feel it needs to be applied, in say tutorial examples, or real-life work. And more often then not I either can't get the tutorials to work, the tutorials are too basic, and there are no work opportunities for its application. Knowledge or skills are barely obtained in the first place, and are then not retained at all, and frustration kicks in.
I know there are generally two types of programming books: guides and references. So when I'm only referring to guides, and that's what I'm really interested in learning new technologies, and not looking up particulars.
I know there are generally two types of programming books: guides and references. So when I'm only referring to guides, and that's what I'm really interested in learning new technologies, and not looking up particulars.
I've known people who can literally read a technical book from start to finish and immediately assimilate the knowledge. They remember the content and then are capable of immediately applying to to a situation, perhaps referring to the material or perhaps not sometimes. I have tried to do that, and I am simply incapable of doing so, which again frustrates me.
I remember when I was trying to get into Spring Batch more, and I would aim to read and complete chapters every week for a couple months. Then in work, using Spring Batch, I could apply almost nothing from my "homework" because I wouldn't remember anything that I had read about.
My strategy was reading and making notes (and re-reading, re-reading) and completing tutorials, but I think in my case I need more than that, and I'm not sure what. I have tried to identify better strategies and I found a few posts online about that:
- https://blog.newrelic.com/2015/03/18/learn-code-programming-book/
- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/17826/how-do-people-read-big-technical-books
- http://norvig.com/21-days.html
I think a lot of this comes down from my school or university days. I mean, in my lifetime I've received no formal training in how I am supposed to learn from a textbook, especially programming. So perhaps I'm doing things wrong. Perhaps smarter people than me don't need to follow other learning protocols, or the best practice for learning have already come naturally to them. Muddling along and trying to do what I've done before isn't for the best, and I'm tired of it.
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