
Ask HN: Learn while doing, or do and learn? - nullundefined
&quot;Learning while doing&quot; could be reading a book on XYZ technology and building a product using XYZ technology.<p>&quot;Doing and learning&quot; would be building a product using XYZ and learning as needed.<p>With limited time in the day, I find myself doing the latter and wondering how others work.
======
me_not_brucelee
Personally, I think it depends. Its more pragmatic to think about "when is it
the right moment to use this approach", instead of "what is right or wrong".
Usually when it is related to some concept I need to understand, I would
alternate between 40% reading and 60% doing. If it is related to some theory
that requires in depth knowledge to get it right(and hard to understand), I
would alternate between 80% reading, 10% doing, 10% reflection. If it is a
tiny task, I'll alternative between 5% reading, 95% doing. If copy pasting or
it is something I know, 100% doing. If I'm reading something that
fundamentally affects how I program or think, I'll alternative between 80%
reading, 20% reflection. I use to be a perfectionist(listen more to myself),
now I'm more pragmatic(listen more to the world). Ultimately, it comes down to
what you are comfortable of not knowing, but still can get shit done and
progress.

------
weitzj
I start off skimming through a book/tutorials/how-to vetting if my idea of
using XYZ holds and I ( hopefully) will not run into corner stones.

Then I would do "doing and learning" along the way.

This approach works for me, but sometimes I get a feeling of missing out
something.

So I got me this new Haskell book:
[http://haskellbook.com](http://haskellbook.com) for further enlightenment and
want to first work through the book before applying it to project XYZ.

SoI guess to get work done I rely on the "doing and learning" approach. To
challenge my brain/learn a new way of thinking, I rely on reading the books
without skimming.

------
partisan
Depends on what your goal is. Do you want to Do or do you want to Learn? Pick
one and optimize for it.

I've created the most beautiful half-finished architectures. I learned tons,
but they were never close to being complete and I moved on to other things
because over time, I realized that I wanted to learn more than I wanted to do.
The good news is that after many years of learning, I am able to do things
without having to really learn, but the bad news is I am no longer in my 20's,
free of responsibility, or able to pull all-nighters.

------
brudgers
To me, the two ways of learning are not mutually exclusive. Sometimes the
reading motivates me to act in the real world, and often researching the
problem at hand leads to further research into the larger context in order to
make more informed decisions.

