learning how to learn

hahahaha they’re like “it’s not natural for humans to sit in a chair thinking about abstract symbols all day” and my neurodivergent ass is sitting here like “wym”
“your brain is the part of your programming toolchain that nobody actually talks about”
long term memory is in the neocortex
“i think in aviation they call this sort of thing "task saturation", when a pilot has more things to keep track of than they can actually keep track of” - lisa in chat
there are advantages to having small working memory too!!
- it makes you more flexible in working with ideas!
“working memory management” - minimize distractions in your environment to maximize available working memory for doing the actual work - cognitive load
- “what can i remove from the environment to get more signal and less noise”
- good programming is about managing complexity—that basically is about the ability to keep the relevant factors in mind—”meant to economize working memory”
anxiety management is just part of the job!!!
brain has two ways of thinking (actually visible in fmri too!): (central executive network)
- focused mode -
  - cognitive fixation: your brain “slithers back” to the same well-worn patterns
  - a plinko board with tight pegs, low entropy
- diffuse mode (default mode network; task negative network) - “mind wandering”
  - activate with “bed, bath, or bus”
  - a plinko board with few pegs, high entropy, the puck can go farther or has more options of where it can go
- “is this the same as system 1 thinking vs system 2 thinking?”
- say you’re learing about division about
“every notificaiton that pops up consumes a litlte bit of mental ram”
learning is different from working on e.g. a report where
why pomodoro is so useful:
declarative learning goes through the hippocampus, procedural learning goes through the basal ganglia
declarative learning
- explicit instruction, conscious
- fast to learn, slow to use
- more flexible than procedural
procedural learning
- not consciosus of learning, can’t explain it
- complex patterns
- slow to lern, fast to use
- can’t adapt to changes in the circumstance
- “tacit deep understanding”
procedural fluency in programming
- tooling:
  - speed of workflow
  - code editor: jump to definition, rename symbol,
  - cli: grep/ack, curl, tree, reverse lookup,
  - use less working memory, keeps you in the flow of problem solving (aka the actual work)
- language you’re working in
  - “i can just look it up” yeah but it takes you out of the flow
  - if a verb or noun isn’t in your long term memory, then it’s not available to think of when you’re problem solving
- retrieval practice is shown to be the most effective way to practice
  - first learning lays down a link. then every time you retrieve the info again, you strengthen the link.
  - “synaptic janitor” sweeps away the little fragments of new thoughts that aren’t being used or connected
  - right before sleep, retrieve a key idea that you’re trying to understand, and it will help build up the neurons while you sleep.
    - for bonus points, see if you can recall it again in the first few minutes after waking up
“programmer intuition”
- it’s not jsut a better conceptual understanding
- pattern recognition
- synthesis of declarative and procedural competence
the neocortex has more synaptic connections than there are grains of sand on the earth!
when your “brain just feels tired” after studying etc—it’s buildup of gaba! sleep helps clean it out
- this is why switching to a different subject is helpful, you’re using a different part of your brain that maybe doesn’t
does typing faster actually make you a better programmer or even improve your problem solving capacity

if a verb or noun isn’t in your long term memory, then it’s not available to think of when you’re problem solving