Your method of learning something new?

[JasonTomLee]

How do you guys approach learning a new skill or anything unfamiliar?

I consider myself a hands-on learner- someone who needs to make mistakes to learn effectively. I wonder what alternate methods others apply to learn~

 

[Lonewolff]

Same as you, hands on.

If I don't understand something I usually go OCD until I learn it way beyond a level that I need to. Then when I take a few steps back, everything seems very simple.

 

[Siolfor the Jackal]

I usually need to take something apart to learn about it. The way I learnt GM is by looking at source code for example projects and completed tutorials to see how they work.

 

[Nocturne]

I have tidied this topic of varios posts that had nothing to do with the OP's question. Please respect other people's questions and either try to answer them with something meaningful or just not post, but please don't post stupid comments and deflect attention from the OP to yourself like some attention starved child.

How do you guys approach learning a new skill or anything unfamiliar?

I like to just get stuck in and try stuff out and see what happens until I reach a brick wall or break something or break myself... at which point I will then go the opposite direction and devour as much material as possible without doing anything further (manuals, videos, articles, etc...) - anything I can find, even if I don't understand all of it. Once I feel that I have a better understanding I'll then settle down to a routine which is usually a combination of try stuff, read stuff, try stuff, read stuff... etc...

 

[Kezarus]

Diving into it. Like most of above answers.

1. I try to do something
2. Hit something that I don't know
3. Research for tutorials and manuals
4. Learn
5. Back to 1

 

[sofaspartan]

I tend to do a lot of tinkering around at first and then realize I'm in way over my head. At that point, I turn to tutorial vids and articles for help.

 

[Rob]

If the question is regarding "How do I learn something new in GameMaker" then :

1) If it's something I have no idea on how to do I'll search the internet. I might need a video or two to get me going but sometimes articles are enough.
2) I then try and implement the idea and usually make some mistakes / get things wrong / make tutorials based on my misconceptions so that future coders will also get the wrong idea.

It usually takes me some time to get the hand of something (although that's not always the case) and I think my best asset is tenacity for this kind of thing, as my age has dimmed by brain cells.

 

[Dogwithswords]

Right off the bat, I try to identify knowledge gaps. This has been my habit throughout college.

If I look away from the material and try to describe what I've read in my own words, I can tell whether I know what I'm talking about. And when I take notes about a new topic, I always type what I didn't understand down in raw form and try to comprehend it at my convenience. Heuristically, writing down what I've read drastically improves my comprehension. For each knowledge gap, I conduct supplemental research and briefly summarize them in my own words. If I can explain it to a friend or anyone else, then I feel I have a firm grasp on the concept and can move on.

I also find questions more valuable than answers. Each answer can potentially yield a question or perhaps a plethora of questions. It is when you hit bedrock with the seemingly unanswerable ones that you may discover something incredible.

 

[bunny]

A mix of hands-on and research, I suppose. I often struggle with the initial familiarization of things. Using software as an example, something like Photoshop or FL Studio is super intuitive and user friendly but I need a general idea of the terminology and work flow before I feel like I can just dive in and learn from trial and error.

 

[Ihato]

Everybody in this thread said they learn by tinkering, so I'll go out on the limb and say my learning method is completely different.

Namely (before I actually do anything), I like to create a list of *all* actions I can take, and then visualize in great detail what each action would mean for me. For example, if I were to learn a new library, I would list every function in a .txt document and visualize the way I would use each and every one in a lot of different contexts I can come up with. After spending hours (sometimes even days and sleepless nights) assembling legoes like this in my head, I usually have a clear vision what to make of my knowledge and how to actually apply it. This basically provides me with a holistic overview of the subject matter, is what I'm trying to say.

In my college (I was in EE), I was greatly intimidated by sheer size of math - if I started tinkering with an exercise I would feel like I'm wasting time and would never get to do 1000 others. And this pumped my anxiety through the roof. So one day, I decided to go from cover to cover and just catalog every single definition and theorem, and once I was done I felt like I had a map and no longer felt lost at all! Since then, I've been trying to shoehorn this method to everything and I've never been intimidated by the size of anything since then.

Though I can't say this method doesn't backfire sometimes - cause sometimes things don't work the way you visualize and you jeopardize yourself to confirmation bias. Nevertheless there were some people who were really successful doing this e.g. a physicist Theodor Kaluza (friend of Einstein) who learned how to swim by studying a book on swimming, and Alex Honnold who climbed a vertical mountain by visualizing in detail how he'd do so over and over for years.

Again, I will admit this is actually not such a great method as I make it out to be -- since you can't eke out on visualization alone -- but it does greatly reduce anxiety and gives you a bigger picture and that's what matters to me!