{"id":9,"date":"2022-01-10T17:19:02","date_gmt":"2022-01-10T17:19:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/techgooder\/?p=9"},"modified":"2022-01-10T17:19:02","modified_gmt":"2022-01-10T17:19:02","slug":"learning-new-systems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/techgooder\/2022\/01\/10\/learning-new-systems\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning new systems"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This week I’ve been thinking a lot about independent learning. The more CS topics I learn about, the more I see how much I don’t know. There are so many languages, frameworks, systems, concepts, etc. to explore — being an expert on all of them is impossible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One thing I hear a lot is that, in CS fields, you can’t think of your learning as done just because you’ve got a degree in your hand. These days, I don’t think any of us, regardless of field, have that luxury. The next job\/role\/position will always ask us to learn new things and conquer new concepts. This isn’t a bad thing. Learning can be fun! But, let’s not forget another piece of wisdom…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Fun<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

If you know a surefire way to not fail at life and learning, please share it with the rest of the class. In the meantime, I’ll just have to do my pathetic best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Step one: don’t get overwhelmed. There’s a saying I like about murdering an endangered species for crass, caloric concerns…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"How<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When learning a new system, I like to start with a high-level overview. Getting the sky-high view helps me contextualize what I’m about to learn, where this system fits, what I might want to use it for, etc. Not exactly groundbreaking stuff, but hey, it works!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m not ashamed to admit that I often turn to Wikipedia for this. There are myriad useful articles with broad overviews of CS concepts, though I generally don’t find it quite as useful for learning how to use a new tool or framework.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A good book on the topic should include a good overview as well. I just started reading Hands-On Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn, Keras, and TensorFlow<\/em> by Aur\u00e9lien G\u00e9ron, and it’s chapter 1 overview of machine learning is the best overview I’ve read in a while. I felt a lot less stressed about diving into this large, complex, and nebulous topic after getting to grips with just a few broad strokes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Step two: get your hands dirty. Playing with code examples and making toy, hello world programs and the like is a great way to remember what you’re learning and come up with new questions and avenues to explore. One great thing about them thar’ internets is that you can often find a good online tutorial that includes basic information along with the opportunity to practice immediately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Step three: don’t worry about learning everything all at once. It’s not often practical to read a book on the new topic cover to cover, especially as we often find ourselves needing to learn about several new topics at once. I do enjoy learning all the little details and tricks you can find with a fuller approach, but it’s usually necessary to be a bit more focused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Working on small, incremental steps to what I actually need to learn for my current project is a practical approach. Early on, I’ll often be knees-deep in a code editor, working at a glacial pace while looking something up for every other line of code. I’ll know I’ve gotten more comfortable once the official documentation no longer reads like lorem ipsum and I can refer to it freely without needing to refer to it constantly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Step four: ????.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Step five: you’re an expert! Congrats! Wipe your chops, give a quick eulogy for the last extant elephant, and kick that imposter syndrome to the curb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Song of the week: And Saints – Sleigh Bells<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week I’ve been thinking a lot about independent learning. The more CS topics I learn about, the more I see how much I don’t know. There are so many languages, frameworks, systems, concepts, etc. to explore — being an expert on all of them is impossible. One thing I hear a lot is that, … Continue reading “Learning new systems”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12022,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/techgooder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/techgooder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/techgooder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/techgooder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12022"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/techgooder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/techgooder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/techgooder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions\/10"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/techgooder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/techgooder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/techgooder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}