TL:DR More whingeing
I’ve mentioned a few times issues related to learning new material, but the one thing I really miss is the graduated example/exercise. Most authors/tutors go from an explanation of the basics to a quite challenging example. In my own teaching I would introduce an easy example/exercise, then a more complex one, and generally a series where the learning at each step was quite doable.
However, I was teaching semester long courses. Four or five hours a week for about sixteen weeks, and had the opportunity to develop a subject in this way. Although my students still considered me to be a lousy teacher, judging by survey results (or non-attendance at my classes).
I don’t think I’ve encountered any learning resources that do what I wish they would do. I guess a good textbook, designed for use in a semester course, would fill the bill. But with most (all?) colleges putting their learning content online (generally in their private learning portal) textbooks are certainly going out of favour.
This post is motivated by my latest difficulty. I’m attempting to make a simplified version of the example provided in the course I’m currently doing. In order to do that I actually need to understand exactly how the complex example works, because I’m getting a bit stuck on how information flows around the system once its up and running. But that somewhat obviates the need for the simpler version, which is to use as a stepping stone. Once again, I’m just going to have to bite the bullet and tackle the harder task head on.
There’s a book on heuristics called How to Solve It by George Polya. One of his strategies when dealing with a complex problem is to solve a simpler problem first. I’ve always found that to be sound advice. I guess working out how someone else’s code works is not exactly solving a problem.
ETA: I’ve found a few simpler problems on Medium. Not the same problem I’m currently tackling, but enough to give me the feel for how information flows around such systems, which is the crucial understanding in my opinion. 🙂