On Tue, Jun 14, 2016 at 10:59:05AM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
>
> I think Edward's being sucked into a vortex of basics at lightning
> speed, and within a couple weeks will know as much about the basics
> necessary for Felker PID1 as you do (which would be twice what I know,
> I found your explanation really hit the spot). Different people learn
> differently: Perhaps Edward learns much faster from doing than from
> reading or receiving instruction. If he ends up in the same place, we
> have one more knowledgeable person in the group.
>
> > It'd be like teaching integral
> > calculus to someone not having mastered multiplication yet:
> > frustrating for both student and teacher.
>
> I'd use a different analogy, but sometimes, for some people, it's better
> to learn the calculus first.
>
> >
> > There is no substitute for learning things from the bottom
> > up. There is no silver bullet! You *have* to go through the
> > basics to even have a chance of understanding more advanced
> > concepts.
>
> Yes, but in what order? It's very possible and practical to learn C in
> a need-to-know order, rather than studying all the system calls just to
> program a PDF watermarker.
>
> A real beauty of this thread started by Edward is it motivated you to
> give a very succinct explanation of the Felker PID1. Don't think for a
> minute that Edward was the only one who learned from your explanation:
> It reinforced my knowledge too, and I doubt I'm the only one.


I got to know Edward on this mailing list back when he started wording
on what now seems to be called the simple netaid. It was plain that
he didn't know what he was doing, and kept asking the most elementary
questions. He knew he was somewhat of a novice in these matters, kept
apologising, and kept being attacked for it by some on this list. But
the attacks were also forcefully rebutted by others and I'm glad of it.
He learns *fast*, has contributed to our project, and I'm glad of it.

He also seems to be more confident, and defends himself on occasion.

I'm interested to see what will become of this simple init project of
his. Not that we need yet another init, but that the development
process is a vehicle for learning, and the discussions here will make
the issues quite clear to many of us.

>
> It's called Curiosity Driven Learning, and even though it can seem
> crazy to people having all the foundational knowledge, it's probably
> the quickest way to acquire knowledge, and soon enough the foundational
> knowledge is acquired.

For some people, this is the *only* thing that works.

I find the step-by-step bottom-up process intolerably boring. I need
the context -- what the detailed facts are going to be good for --
becure I can even follow the step-by-step bottom-up details. Usually,
sone of it is what I need, and the rest is just details -- details that
a true afficianado of the basics will enjoy to the hilt and revel in,
but have little applicability to the issues at hand.

I don't know if this mode of learning is specific to those with
attention deficit, but it certainly works for them as nothing else
does. Paradoxically, those with attention deficit seem to have an
ability to hyperfocus on specific things, forsaking all others, and
not let them go until they have mastered them. If this requires
smatterings of other fields called "foundations", so be it. They will
pick up what they need in passing.

And later, if they find themselves returning to those foundations for
any reason, they will already have a background that helps the other
spects of those foundations to fit into place.

It's what makes category theory hard to learn. Everyone keeps
preseting it in the abstract as a foundational theory involving
"objects" and "arrows"; whereas it makes sense in the presence of
applications. Some mathematician even said that the *only* way
category theory makes sense is to start with a field where it is
applied and to work down from there.

So if someone want to learn integral calculus and haven't figured out
about multiplication, they will pick up what they need along the way.
More likely, if they need to use integral calculus for something, they
will pick up what they need of that. Look, for example, at the ancient
Greeks. They used the ideas of integral calculus to find things like
the area of a circle, dividing the circle into tiny segments and
rearranging them. That's what they needed; that's what they figured
out.

-- hendrik