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who else is copying sample code by hand just to get the patterns drilled in their head? Is that method of learning still valid?

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This is why I'm trying to get people to use the Dia browser because you can just inline chat with your web page.

People think it's a fad, but it's the only scientific method of learning.

Yeah, I've been studying memory and learning quite a bit. The way to learn books is to put it down after reading and recall everything you just read. Another way is to make relationships with knowledge you already have. Ask a lot of clarifying questions.

Note-taking is similar; it's not meant to summarize what you just came across. But that's pretty neat. You can use Granola for the summarization and then use your own neural net for helping with memory and learning.

But the point is not to offload all your thinking.

it's not 1:1 but ~this is why i've found myself using granola over other ai notetakers. i find i remember less about a meeting if i offload note taking entirely.

Tricks with polynomials and Riemann-Roch spaces. Breaking into the platonic realm to pillage forbidden abstractions. Starknet grantee.

Yeah, like if I'm learning about MCPs and going through their tutorial, I think there is some value in manually writing down the code by hand just to form those associations, similar to how great artists, writers, and painters will imitate work to learn the details.

I definitely do this with UI design, which is probably why even with very little real-life experience, the quality of my craft is better than 99% of the devs.

Yep, with AI, I'm wondering if this has changed for people. It likely has, but somebody who practices it and then entirely stops, I wonder if they can notice the difference in their memory or their ability to retain information. Or even the practicality of the friction that comes from not being able to quickly hash it out.

Even though coding doesn't require great memory, people who can ship fast enough have enough of a working memory that they can get the basics out without having to reference things. And then they’ll use reference material for edge cases when building interfaces.

Do you mean writing it down or typing it yourself? If the latter I do it all the time. Less so now with AI. I used to go through books and videos following along typing all the code and modifying it now I just read the book and watch the videos to get have an overview of things at my disposal and delegate the memory part to the AI.

How do you verify it wasn't working? A point on improving learning is to use the Bloom's taxonomy.

How might you use this to improve your understanding? It's obviously essential to create things once you learn the API or the framework. A slightly lower lift might be to add another tool or resource to the sample MCP, if say you were learning MCPs.

An even lower lift might be to just explain to yourself what you just read after going through the entire documentation or page.

Another way is to simply retype the key functions and copy-paste the rest.

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Understanding how something was designed is probably a good way to understand and improve your understanding of the existing framework.

I personally find it interesting to go through GitHub discussions on what might be on the roadmap or what was discussed prior. I think something llms can help with by parsing all the GitHub discussions and issues. 

Creating a small server or something with the framework is probably an excellent way, but might not give you as much exposure to the surface area of the given tool.

I used to do this.

Wasn't seeing much results so I stopped

I personally think so! Been doing that while learning Rust for a tiny side project