After you had to learn to use spice, matlab, VHDL, all the weired stuff of physics (Quantum mechanics, physical stats, relativity...), english and german ... then computer new technologies are laughably neither complex nor disrupting.
Most of the new techs are fraud like angular; like in science a new tech should be something that simplifies the world with a simplified view : a map.
A map should always be simpler than the stuff you want to describe. Angular for instance is kind of the string theory of JS development; formalism is complex, it makes a lockin for incompetent devs but it brings nothing new.
But still, I can do angular fairly well, because I like to rant, and it is funnier to rub your despise into people's face when you outsmart them.
Computer language when you had to learn thousands of words to be understood and complex grammars for foreign languages are freaking easy; python is around 50 core words. Perl 300 ...
Most of what computer science are proud of is scam. No critical thinking and no building up of intuition makes people looks like headless chicken yelling «new tech, new tech» and bumping into each other.
Me on the other hand, I can guess where the flow of circuitry will bring the data into memory, if their will be localisation if the L1, L2 cache will be used. I can feel the unstability of the sequencer with page fault or OOP missing.
Why?
Because computer is still a dumb automata that is part of my formation; I learnt how to build microchips.
But electronics also learns you how to face complexity.
You don't see the world bottom up or top down. You are like a go player. You embrace the world's complexity by building up 2 pictures of complexity one for the bottom the other for the top and you try to make them converge in the middle.
high level abstractions like CSS and files (yes a file that has the open/read/write/seek/tell/close/ioctl is an abstraction, it does not exists on the silicium level) requires to be careful. But still they are never new. They are built up on other layers of abstraction (geometry for CSS)
Some abstractions are insanely more complex than the world they describe (CSS). Happily for me I learnt Tk/Tcl that gave the packing geometry understanding (the so called boxing model).
Angular is shit, but I learnt xmlhttppartialrequest a long time ago, so I know how to circumvent this horror.
I can quote a lot of example where focusing on the basics on the core of knowledge (what does the GIL do, how to bind on a library with python, who does the PCI bus works) finally makes you outsmart the competition of the stupid devs throwing themselves in new technology in the hope they can cut corners.
There is no lazyness possible. Computer programming requires a lot of knowledge, rather focus on learning the basics :
- what is an OS (especially POSIX);
- network programming;
- algorithm;
- CPU architecture;
- a tinge of ASM;
- bus specification;
- memory allocation;
- physics (only physicists understand why distributed MUST not use timestamps or any global clock and why «acausal» events might occures);
- math: linear algebrae, proba and especially geometry (yep even for CSS);
- theory of measure;
- signal processing and the theory of dectection of errors
When you have the basics, no frameworks or new technology are either intimidating or out of grasp.
Most of the so called new techs are fraud.
If a map is not simpler and as accurate as the world it tries to describe, then throw it away. That's how I deal with new techs; by discarding most of them.
Even though the OP talks about learning new technology, his meaning is actually very different from yours. You're talking about understanding things. The OP is talking about getting up to speed with something and using it productively.
Learning a programming language is easy. Learning how to use it productively includes everything from architecture to testing to style to knowledge of all of the popular libraries and so forth... understanding any of this is not the problem, using it productively and keeping up to date is. And knowing CPU architecture and physics isn't going to help you with that.
As soon as I started watching Computer Science courses that articulately explained the core concepts of a computer I could start looking as languages I was unfamiliar with and at a base level understand what they were trying to do.
Elon Musk says it best...
"“I think it’s important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The normal way we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy. [With analogy] we are doing this because it’s like something else that was done, or it is like what other people are doing. [With first principles] you boil things down to the most fundamental truths…and then reason up from there.”
I get the idea, but i'm afraid to say that it's completely unrelated, you can't compare learning a language to a developing or framework syntax. Because sometimes it could be easier and others harder, i speak and write in french English and German so i'm talking from experience. And nothing is simple or easy because there is always a new layer of depth behind the language that you could get into, and the further you go in the bigger the possibilities get. And my question was never how to learn, but how not to forget
You should assess critically why you can't remember.
It means either you lack knowledge in underlying abstractions OR the map is wrong.
So, you have to orthogonal thinking to do:
- reinforce your capacitive memory by echoing to other concepts (analogy);
- or not remembering inconsistent technologies.
I love the map idea: when learning a new technology try to see it as a map.
Follow blindly the analogy. If it is easy to remember and it works it is good technology.
Else, it may mean the technology is shitty or you lack other intermediates abstractions.
Knowing if it is you or the frameworks that sucks is daily challenge, but I can give you an hint: most modern techs are neither modern nor technology; most of them are pure marketing hype of broken tools.
Most of the new techs are fraud like angular; like in science a new tech should be something that simplifies the world with a simplified view : a map.
A map should always be simpler than the stuff you want to describe. Angular for instance is kind of the string theory of JS development; formalism is complex, it makes a lockin for incompetent devs but it brings nothing new.
But still, I can do angular fairly well, because I like to rant, and it is funnier to rub your despise into people's face when you outsmart them.
Computer language when you had to learn thousands of words to be understood and complex grammars for foreign languages are freaking easy; python is around 50 core words. Perl 300 ...
Most of what computer science are proud of is scam. No critical thinking and no building up of intuition makes people looks like headless chicken yelling «new tech, new tech» and bumping into each other.
Me on the other hand, I can guess where the flow of circuitry will bring the data into memory, if their will be localisation if the L1, L2 cache will be used. I can feel the unstability of the sequencer with page fault or OOP missing.
Why?
Because computer is still a dumb automata that is part of my formation; I learnt how to build microchips.
But electronics also learns you how to face complexity.
You don't see the world bottom up or top down. You are like a go player. You embrace the world's complexity by building up 2 pictures of complexity one for the bottom the other for the top and you try to make them converge in the middle.
high level abstractions like CSS and files (yes a file that has the open/read/write/seek/tell/close/ioctl is an abstraction, it does not exists on the silicium level) requires to be careful. But still they are never new. They are built up on other layers of abstraction (geometry for CSS)
Some abstractions are insanely more complex than the world they describe (CSS). Happily for me I learnt Tk/Tcl that gave the packing geometry understanding (the so called boxing model).
Angular is shit, but I learnt xmlhttppartialrequest a long time ago, so I know how to circumvent this horror.
I can quote a lot of example where focusing on the basics on the core of knowledge (what does the GIL do, how to bind on a library with python, who does the PCI bus works) finally makes you outsmart the competition of the stupid devs throwing themselves in new technology in the hope they can cut corners.
There is no lazyness possible. Computer programming requires a lot of knowledge, rather focus on learning the basics : - what is an OS (especially POSIX); - network programming; - algorithm; - CPU architecture; - a tinge of ASM; - bus specification; - memory allocation; - physics (only physicists understand why distributed MUST not use timestamps or any global clock and why «acausal» events might occures); - math: linear algebrae, proba and especially geometry (yep even for CSS); - theory of measure; - signal processing and the theory of dectection of errors
When you have the basics, no frameworks or new technology are either intimidating or out of grasp.
Most of the so called new techs are fraud.
If a map is not simpler and as accurate as the world it tries to describe, then throw it away. That's how I deal with new techs; by discarding most of them.