Deliberate practice techniques for software developers
Achieving mastery in a skill takes practice. But is practice still useful for people who are already among the best performers in their field?
How does Petr Mitrichev practice for Competitive Programming? (answer)
Why is this post so short? Find the answer, and links to a blog table of contents, at A Summer 2019 Experiment.
If you want to know what competitive programming is, you won’t find the answer in a standard dictionary. Instead, you could look on Wikipedia. It’s not the most hospitable site for competitive programming content, and the main competitive programming article is rudimentary at best. But at least there’s an article, and it hasn’t been deleted (yet).
Alternatively, you could browse the 23 or so answers to the Quora question What is competitive programming? (my answer).
I also wrote a blog post a few years ago that answers the question in a different way: What is Competitive Programming?
Why is this post so short? Find the answer, and links to a blog table of contents, at A Summer 2019 Experiment.
Coding interviews and coding competitions are similar in some ways, but they aren’t interchangeable. For example, they differ in how code is evaluated:
How is the code judged by the companies (during interview) or coding competitions? (answer)
Why is this post so short? Find the answer, and links to a blog table of contents, at A Summer 2019 Experiment.
One of the many complaints that people have about coding interviews is that they are biased towards recent graduates. As the argument goes, recent graduates have just finished studying the algorithm-heavy topics that those interviews favor, so they have an unfair advantage. But the advantage isn’t as strong as one might think, because a typical computer science curriculum isn’t aimed at preparing students for coding interviews or programming contests. Or to put this in the hyperbolic style of Quora questions:
If algorithms are taught in universities, why doesn’t everyone win the ACM-ICPC competition? (answer)
Why is this post so short? Find the answer, and links to a blog table of contents, at A Summer 2019 Experiment.
On June 13, 2012, Quora user Kent Palmer read a post on Cal Newport’s Study Hacks blog, and posted a question: “How do you practice ultra-learning?” It took over seven years, but there’s now a definitive book-length answer to that question, Scott Young’s Ultralearning. I summarized the advice from the book in my answer to the Quora question, and in two blog posts last month:
Here’s another Quora answer from last week:
Question: Is Cracking the Coding Interview a good read to improve my programming skills for future job interviews and competitive programming? If so, do you have other recommendations like books, projects, websites, etc.? (answer)
Why is this post so short? Find the answer, and links to a blog table of contents, at A Summer 2019 Experiment.
This is the 26th week of 2019, which means I have published 26 articles this year, mainly about mathematics practice. With the year halfway over, I’m going to try an experiment. Because, besides being the ninth principle of ultralearning, experimentation is a way to avoid sticking with the same process just because it’s the way things have always been done.
Ultralearning, the new book by Scott Young, comes out in August. Last week, I briefly covered some key ideas from the book, including the ultralearning philosophy and the nine principles of ultralearning. But ultralearning is about projects, so this week I’d like to explore how you could use the ideas in the book to optimize a mathematics learning project.
What is the most effective way to learn a skill or topic? Scott Young believes that the way to answer that question is to design a learning project, experiment with multiple techniques, and report on the results. For the past thirteen years, he has been doing that on his blog and in his online classes. Later this year, his book Ultralearning will be released, with advice for those of us who want to succeed at similar projects.
In recent weeks, I’ve been considering how we can use the advice in James Clear’s Atomic Habits to develop good study habits for learning technical topics. This week, I’m wrapping up my overview of the book with some final Atomic Habits advice.
Last week I went over the key ideas in Atomic Habits, James Clear’s book on leveraging small but consistent changes. This week I’ll consider how you can use these ideas to create effective study habits for learning technical subjects like mathematics.