Comments on Never Read Passively: Top-Down and Bottom-Up Acqusition of Principles

Excellent post! I like the distinction between top...

2008-05-08T09:15:00.000+10:00

Excellent post! I like the distinction between top-down and bottom-up skills acquisition.

At university I learn "bottom-up" from textbooks; at home I learn "top-down" from Internet articles and practical experience.

I wrote a related post: http://pcpcword.wordpress.com/2008/05/08/is-a-practical-understanding-enough-are-fundamental-first-principles-necessary/

Two excellent and related points: A post by
2008-03-28T15:44:00.000+11:00
Two excellent and related points: A post by Erik Naggum on how learning by doing is not enough when programming, highlighting the need to also study first principles. Peter Novig's classic (2001) post on taking 10 years to learn programming, including learning by doing as well as many other important and interrelated strategies.

An observation I forgot to mention regarding botto...

2008-03-27T08:04:00.000+11:00

An observation I forgot to mention regarding bottom-up learning, is that although the information acquisition is resonantly passive (low internalisation bit-rate), generally people on the others side of the process come out thinking they 'know' the domain. The effect is they may be less receptive to acquiring further information about the domain. For example, I feed like I have acquired the principles of Java, although like any field of study there are always more perspectives, more detail, and most importantly, advances.