

What do you feel sucks the most when learning something new on the internet? - rgonzalez

Assuming you have time to learn something new. A new topic you know nothing about. Not to deepen your understanding of a topic.<p>And that it is by yourself, not classroom learning. That is, self-teaching. In the process of going:<p>From: "I want to learn X" (e.g. Spanish, Arduino, Rails, How to build a startup?, How to play guitar?)
To: "This is the resource/link/blog/book I am going to use to learn"<p>What's your biggest frustration? What do you hate the most?<p>Would love to chat beyond here, DM (@rjgonzo) me if you want to chat some more later.
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hodder
The biggest problem for me always seems to be figuring out what I need to
know, rather than finding the resources themselves. For instance, assume you
want to learn how to make a simple web app, and have no experience or
background in programming, CS, databases, etc. Figuring out where to start and
how the puzzle fits together can be really daunting.

You start googling but can't figure out how it all fits together. Javascript,
Ruby, Ajax, Python, Rails, Django, Flask, MySQL, heroku, html, css, jquery,
bootstrap, appengine, aws, servers, browsers, APIs??? It takes some time to
figure out what things even are when you are taking your first steps. Once you
realize you pretty much need to know a bit of HTML to make a website, finding
a suitable tutorial, while sometimes frustrating, isn't all that hard.

Most people here know how these technologies fit together, but as a beginner I
didn't. It took some (frustrating) time to learn how the puzzle pieces fit
together, what is optional, what is new, what is proven... etc.

This problem isn't isolated to programming. I think this is a big problem for
a ton of self directed online learning. Lets say you convince yourself you
would like to become the next Satriani on Guitar, but don't know what scales,
triads, or chords are let alone how they are built. Should I concentrate on
technique drills, songs, improvization, theory? I have met a huge amount of
people who get very intimidated and end out just learning to play songs from
guitar tabs, and never progress from a very superficial beginnner level.

Perhaps it is a result of people not wanting to dive in until they can put
together a basic mental model of how things work. Regardless, the "roadmap to
expertise" problem seems to be real and discouraging for people not willing to
just power through it. Can teachers and Tutors be relpaced in providing the
direction through the weeds? I'm not sure, but surely solving this problem
could be lucrative.

~~~
rgonzalez
Awesome feedback! And I understand, my background is on computer engineering
and even sometimes when starting to learn about something completely new that
I had not done before (e.g. web-services/mobile), despite my previous
knowledge or background, it can be frustrating. So, how could we fix this?

What was your process to figure it out? What did you search for? Where did you
search it? Did you ask someone?

~~~
hodder
I have been thinking about this problem for a while, but I'm still not really
sure how to solve it. I somewhat like the idea of a site with broad topics
which narrow down into steps and tutorials, or links to tutorials. I'm not
sure if this would really work.

I think I just read, googled, youtubed, and forumed my way out of the box.
Surely this can't be the best way.

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ig1
1) Best audio/video lectures on a topic, itunes u has some great lectures, but
discoverability is awful. Close to impossible to find good cotent.

2) Find what I don't know from content which mostly covers stuff I already
know. Normally when I'm reading something I probably know 90% of it already,
but I have to read that 90% anyway to find out what that remaining 10% is.

~~~
rgonzalez
1) Why is discoverability awful? How would you change/improve it?

2) So a tool/place that takes into consideration what you already know and
gives you suggestions on what your next steps should be would help you on your
learning process?

~~~
ig1
1) Try it and see (pick a topic like "pyschology" or "linguistics" and try to
find the best introductory course).

It's broken in pretty much every way possible, you can't sort the content by
ratings or popularity, you can't browse by lecturer/publisher, there's no
recommendation system, there's virtually nothing to distinguish between
lectures on the same topic, some have awful sound recording but you have no
way to know unless you listen to them, etc.

2) I think the more fundamental problem is that knowledge generally isn't
available in small discrete chunks but rather in books, lectures, etc.

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ggchappell
Material with no dates, software version numbers, etc., so that it's hard to
tell whether information is obsolete or not.

Topics that are difficult to search for (D, Processing, ...).

Lack of mid-level information. (Say I want to learn to build websites. I can
easily find, "HTML tags begin with '<'". I can also easily find, "Here's the
bestest, coolest CSS grid." Quality tutorials at a level between these two are
much rarer. Similarly, "to output in Python, use 'print'" vs. "Here's how to
optimize your Django-based site." But in between ... ?)

Video tutorials for anything that doesn't involve physical action. (Give me a
video to teach me how to ride a unicycle, but not how Newtonian mechanics
works. How to type, yes, but not how to code.)

Video without subtitles/transcript.

Audio-only for anything at all. Ick.

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rcush
A significant amount of what is written on the Internet seems to cater to the
extremes of opinion. Therefore it can often be difficult to find something
rational, well thought out and considered. This makes analysis of subjects
very difficult because there is no moderate voice or that voice gets drowned
out by the extremists.

A second issue is that a good many articles online that profess to be teaching
something cite no sources whatsoever. As a lawyer I find it very difficult to
move past that, and even if the content seems _good_ , I'll immediately be put
off using that source to learn from.

~~~
rgonzalez
What if every resource on the web was put to the test against a community?
Rather than just existing, a community would have to sort-of approve you in
order to be relevant on a certain topic?

What if that resource was somehow validated/curated by people that have used
it before? Or was submitted by an expert that topic? Would you be more willing
to give that resource a try?

~~~
rocky1138
Yes!

We have that already, though (StackOverflow).

~~~
rgonzalez
What if you wanted to learn something that is not related to programming? What
if you wanted to know the best books/blogs/etc to learn how to make awesome
tutorial videos?

Where do you usually go in that case (for validated/curated resources)?

(And event on SO these kind of questions get closed down. Some get protected,
but is only after they get significant traffic.
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-
single-m...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most-
influential-book-every-programmer-should-read))

~~~
rocky1138
Quora was awesome until their privacy fiascos.

------
147
For me, the biggest problem is going past beginner and becoming intermediate
at something. It always seems like the lists of curated resources are targeted
towards either beginners or advanced, never in between.

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revorad
Not being able to ask questions one-on-one to someone who knows it, has been
through it before, because in my experience, a lot of leaps in learning happen
when someone explains something from a different point of view. And no, IRC is
not good enough.

Finding resources used to be a problem, but it's mostly not any more. And I
can't really learn anything well from just one resource. I like to drink from
many wells.

~~~
rgonzalez
"Finding resources used to be a problem, but it's mostly not any more" Why is
it not a problem any more?

How many wells usually?

~~~
revorad
At least for the things I'm interested in (programming, music, cooking,
marketing), there are plenty of good reputable sites and apps with high
quality content. Google, Youtube and Stack Overflow are a good starting point.
Now there's also Udemy, Coursera, Udacity etc.

Could finding resources be better? Of course! Everything can be improved.

But if your question is what's the _most_ difficult part of my learning, then
honestly it's not finding material. It's getting over the roadblocks in the
journey.

I have thought of this problem a lot, and I can sense that you may have
already formed an idea around making a better search or discovery tool. That's
an easy one for programmers to fall for. But just because it seems doable, it
doesn't mean it's the most important problem to solve.

For example, before Khan Academy came around, no techies really understood
that one of the most important things in learning is simply good material. No
amount of cool tools and search engines will help you unless you have good
content to begin with.

~~~
rgonzalez
I don't really have a problem finding the material either for a topic I am
somewhat familiar with. Might take some time, might take discerning over more
than a few resources on the web. But I do find it. However my point is what
you just said, good material is important. And the tools for finding the
material search the whole internet which has a bunch of useless stuff. And
thus cost me sometime I rather spent elsewhere.

Your sense is correct. But is not around the idea of a search engine. Is about
a tool/place that only has good material. Relevant, validated, curated
material. Would something like that help you?

Do you feel just as confortable finding the material for a completely new
topic as you do for when you are looking for something you know and you are
only trying the deepen your knowledge regarding that topic?

~~~
revorad
_Relevant, validated, curated material._

The sites I mentioned above are already doing that. Plus I also like to curate
material on my own.

Only two things would really help me -

1\. You create more amazing content for things I'm interested in learning.

2\. You connect me to people who can answer my stupid questions when I get
stuck - in real-time. Any delay just kills motivation.

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rocky1138
Questions on forums that are responded to by the OP with "Nevermind. Got it."

Thanks for helping the rest of us with the same problem, you jackasses! :P

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devb0x
Time, lack of time really, because man o man i can get caught up and obsessed
once I'm trying to learn something new

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n2dasun
Sounds like you're up to something similar to an idea that I've been batting
around for a while. Best of luck!

