I’ve always been a book learner. I’ve learned just about everything I know about computers from books, sometimes from books bought in order to learn something I said I knew to be read in between the time I said I knew it and the time I’ve started the job where I was supposed to know it. Hell, even when I was in school I used to read in class instead of paying attention to the professors. But lately, between my internet addiction and all the other distractions in life, I just don’t seem to be able to get through text books the way I used to. Glancing over at my book shelf, I can see books on Ruby on Rails and Ajax that I intended to read once and become and instant expert on, just like I always used to, but which I ended up reading two or three chapters, wandering away, and never coming back. And that’s not to mention the growing pile of unread or barely skimmed magazines that has to be culled every few months for fear of them taking over the house.
A few days ago I was reading a blog posting from a guy who works at Google about how to get a job at Google. Now, I’ve been through the Google interview processes, and one thing that struck me was that the fact that I don’t know as much of the basic Computer Science theory as people who actually spent their time in University studying Computer Science, as opposed to pre-stressed concrete and sewage. But in spite of my Civil Engineering degree, I’ve done pretty well for myself as a computer programmer, and I consider myself a pretty damn good problem solver and algorithm designer. Another book on my book shelf I bought and intended to read and never did is called “Design Patterns”. Every now and then I glance at it and discover that there is a proper name for something I independently invented in the decades since I discovered that I’m a natural at Object Oriented Programming.
But anyways, that blog post got me thinking that maybe I should fill in the basics a bit, if not to get a job at Google, at least to make me better at what I do. I looked at some of the text books he recommended, and they were both expensive, and one of them was out of stock. And I thought, “nah, I don’t need another unread book for my shelves”. But then somebody in the comments on that blog post mentioned this on-line university course. And so I started downloading the videos of the lectures (and [shudder]RealPlayer[/shudder] to watch them with). And that’s when I discovered something that’s very new for me – I’m actually finding it much more compelling to watch a good professor at work than to read his course notes. I don’t know why, but not only am I learning a lot from this course, but I’m enjoying it immensely.
I’m enjoying it so much, in fact, that I’m starting to really think that Vicki’s suggestion that I take advantage of her tuition benefit and take some courses at RIT might be a good thing. Hmmm.
Can you give me a pointer to the lectures? I need to brush up on this stuff too.
I’ve always learned better by listening than reading texts.
Of course, so much depends on who’s doing the teaching.
I hope your recent luck in finding interesting profs continues.
I’m the reverse – I can’t concentrate and focus on an audio stream with looking at or creating text at the same time. It’s important to discover and work with your learning style.
I have the same issue with mounting unread books and magazines. I blame (and simultaneously embrace and hold dear) the Internet.
I do the same thing. I have a pile of books that I’ve skimmed at best.
I have found that if I don’t have an immediate need for whatever it is that I’m trying to read up on, then chances are I’ll drop it.
Sounds much much too much like me, modulo having the long-ago CS degree, but at 45 I’ve learned enough to be intimidated by the magnitude of all that’s still out there, and especially between jobs and really *hoping* to find a new gig I’m a bit worried about the lack of youthful exuberance to carry me through. And then there’s the Sysadmin Decade, taking me a ways off the pure programming track.
I used to be a good book reader and learned TurboPascal during an Easter vacation simply through reading a book on it. I still have the book 🙂
But these days I tend to learn more through “hands on”, and this causes unexpected gaps in knowledge which a book would probably cover. I start reading a book and _itch_ to use the knowledge and when I can’t think of any project which would make use of it then I tend to drift away.
Maybe I should force myself to learn from books again. I keep meaning to learn python (a language that promises to be useful, but for which I have no actual need) or DHTML and AJAX (I could even smarten up my crudtastic html2 web page). In my CFT.