On Learning

CJ: Welcome to build and learn.

My name is CJ.

Colin: And I'm Colin and this
week I thought we could chat

a little bit about learning.

we'll talk about the second part
of the build and learn, as it's

been something that we've been both
learning a lot of new things lately.

So we'll dig into that.

But first we have some
fitness check ins to do.

How's that going?

CJ: I think the accountability thing
has actually been going really well.

Right.

We have this Facebook group of dads who
send each other pictures of their food.

I feel like, you know, early
Instagram days where everyone

was just taking pictures of
their food and posting it online.

It feels very much like that, but, it's
been really good at making sure that I.

I'm eating healthy because I'm not
going to, if I eat like a donut or

muffin or ice cream, then I definitely
feel guilty about it because yeah, I

have to take a picture of it and send
it to them and be like, I ate this.

so it's like literally everything
you're putting in your mouth, you take

a picture and you send it to them.

Sometimes it's hard.

And I'll take a picture of my
half empty plate and send it.

But, It has been, yeah, I've been
learning a lot in the fitness realm about

vitamins and supplements and like all
of this stuff for, trying to balance,

different hormones and try to like,
recover quicker and feel less sore.

And, we've been exercising a ton just for.

I don't know, a ton for us
is like 90 minutes a day.

I mean, I think I saw some video of
you just like running through the

mountains, like across these Sierra
Nevada, Sierra Nevada mountain ridgetops.

Just no problem.

Colin's out for a 10 mile run.

And I'm in my house on my little
stationary bike riding 45 minutes and

feeling like I got a good workout.

But,

Colin: all counts.

It all counts.

that was an exception for me.

I don't normally go out
and do that, but that was

CJ: where were you?

What was that?

Yeah.

Tell me the story.

What, like.

Colin: Yeah, that was
three and a half hours.

That was, from, that
was Mount Rose summit.

So it was like 12 miles, I think, but
very, very, a lot of vertical climbing.

CJ: Yeah.

Colin's being humble right now.

Go check out his Instagram and
there's, or it, was it a story?

Cause it

Colin: I think it was a story, but no, I
mean, I hadn't done this since like 2019.

So I was destroyed after this.

I can just barely walk
normally again today.

So I don't recommend like you should
definitely ease into these things.

And honestly, I don't do 90 minutes a day.

that's like back to our
last episodes, like.

Consistency trumps like these
big like herculean things.

So I'd probably be better at doing
the 90th day and not do something,

hurt myself, do something, be
too sore to do anything else.

but yeah, my friend was like super well
trained up for a bunch of trail runs and I

thought I would be able to hang with him.

and I, I kind of did, he, he finished
a good half an hour before I did.

but.

Yeah, it was, it was fun.

But I think, it's good that
you're getting out there.

The, the Hackers Incorporated podcast
with Ben and Adam, they just did a fitness

episode and Adam really extolled the
like, how well just taking pictures of

your, what you're eating and sending it.

Like he has a, he has an app that
he pays every month for that.

I think it's like 300 bucks
a month for my body tutor.

and they're checking in.

It's accountability.

It's mindset.

It's, uh, you know, did you, what's,
what are you grateful for gratitude,

you know, and, and they really, he
did focus a lot on, I would definitely

recommend people check out the episode.

I think they get a little, the
opposite of body positivity.

It's a little bit hard to listen
to some of that episode just

because a little fitness bro
toxic, I think, but, like, yeah.

You know, listening to this, I don't
think everyone who's listening needs

to lose weight and needs to have
this, we know that life comes at

you hard, that you've, people have
got kids, people have got work.

For me, it comes from a place of, sitting,
Is the new smoking and like the amount

of time we sit in front of computers.

It's like awesome that we get to do
this, but I also need to balance it

with just being healthy and, being
able to, play with my niece and run

around and not bend over, get off
the couch and not be able to move.

so I would.

Check it out.

Obviously take some of
the things that Adam says.

I understand how he got there.

I understand he's wanted to do this
for a long time and probably had

some, some negative self talk and
things like that built up around it.

But, I would just say like, we're not
coming from that place necessarily.

I think everyone has a goal
that they want and that's fine.

There's nothing wrong with that.

But, we all don't have to look
like, actors and actresses

who get paid to look that way.

CJ: Right.

Do you, so like along the lines
of learning about fitness, do you,

are you still sort of learning or
are you mostly no, I know this, the

several sports that I'm into and I
participate in those on a certain

frequency and that makes you feel good.

Or do you seek out.

like articles to help you improve with
certain things or what's your current

setup for your fitness lifestyle?

Colin: Yeah, I think this is one of those
things where you can learn and learn and

learn, but then you just have to do it.

So like I have an Instagram folder
that I save fitness stuff into and it's

like routines and all these things.

But the problem is there's
more things in there than I do.

And if I just stuck with one of
them, you're going to see results.

And so like, usually I just run.

but I have a really light like
kettlebell setup at home, and more

like body weight, a little bit of
kettlebells, like calisthenics stuff just

because . I don't have a gym membership.

I don't have a set of weights
at home or anything like that.

and I think actually Adam focused
on that too, like everyone who wants

to focus on macros is like that's
only really going to make a big

difference if you're like training
for competition or something, versus

if you focus on calories and movement
and protein specifically, like that's

most of what you need to think about.

so again, back to the consistency, like
you can read and learn all the things,

but at some point you just gotta do one.

CJ: Definitely.

Colin: What about you?

CJ: I am still learning a ton.

I think, my wife, Nicole and I were
just talking about this, how we

took this nutrition class in college
and, paid very little attention.

But, one of the things
that we learned was how.

Calories are measured for a certain food.

And like right now you
can go on my fitness pal.

There's like tons of databases that you
can basically look up any food and it'll

tell you like roughly here's how many,
calories are in this food and it'll

break down the macros between fats and,
proteins and carbohydrates or whatever.

But, I, there were some foods where I
was like, Oh, this is totally homemade.

Whatever pasta or cookies or, lasagna.

And I'm like, how the
heck do you measure this?

and so one of the rabbit holes I went
down this week was like looking up

this device called a bomb calorimeter,
which is like this thing where you you.

Put the food inside of it.

And then it like burns the food and
I don't know exactly all the details

are, above my head in terms of the
science of it, but it basically

tries to figure out really accurately
how many calories are in the thing.

And, calorie coming back is
just like a unit of energy.

And I thought that was like a fun
little rabbit hole, but yeah, I

feel like I'm constantly learning.

And this week I had my like annual
physical with the doctor and did

some blood work and, cholesterol
and everything like looks amazing

compared to last year when I did it.

And we were talking about it, I wish
we could do this, like every month,

get a, get blood drawn like every
single month because I feel like,

yeah, it looks great now, but it's only
probably only because I've been working

out hard for a month, you know, and,

Colin: Well, and it's like, what's
the granularity of your data?

we're looking, it's like trying to fly
a plane and you get data every hour.

that would be bad, right?

Why don't we get this every month?

And obviously, healthcare is not cheap.

Healthcare is not accessible to everybody.

I rant about that a lot.

Like the Whoop device that
I use, I pay for that.

Every month to have, because it's
more of like my check engine light.

I think we've mentioned this before
of, I know every day, like if

something's off, it's not necessarily
like it's fitness related, but

it's not necessarily like diet and
exercise and those kinds of things.

It's more of like stress and
how well recovered are you and

how much did you strain today?

But yeah, having your like glucose levels,
your blood, reports every month would

be amazing to have that because then you
can also look and see like, How stress.

You know affecting that stuff as well

CJ: yeah, totally.

Before we get into more details
about what we're learning about,

what are you, what are you building?

How's your, calendaring app going?

Colin: Yeah, I guess I guess this
is a good time capsule for the

calendar app That's going well.

I actually did a demo of it today
for the team's that was fun But I'm

getting pulled off on to something else.

We have we have one virtual machine
running on an older host that the

company has had since Discord started
and they want to get rid of it.

It's like the last server.

So my new job is to get the app off
of that server and onto Google cloud.

So I got to do that next
week so we can finally kill.

It's actually DigitalOcean, which
I enjoy DigitalOcean, but it's,

we just have one server there.

So we're going to get rid of that.

so learning a little bit more,
like more DevOps y stuff again.

Just, it's I have to relearn it every
time I go back to it, but yeah, that's

all I'm really focused on right now.

How about you?

CJ: Very cool.

We are, we're building all kinds of stuff.

I'm starting to get real adoption for
our like internal tool for managing

the paint business operations.

And this week I'm focused on, sending
out a bunch of transactional emails

that happen along the process.

before someone.

Has their place painted.

We want to ask them if they have
preferences about, you know, where

we park and what door codes to
use and like how to get in, how

to get out and things like that.

And so those types of emails, I.

In the past have all really enjoyed
putting in like open click tracking and

trying to make, make sure that you, not
only are we sending these outbound emails,

but we know, are they being delivered
when they're being delivered, when they're

being opened, when they're being actioned?

The way that I've done that in the past is
most email providers let you set a header

in the email when you're sending it.

And then they also often will provide
a webhook for different events that

happen along the cycle of that email.

And so with SendGrid, you can send one
header that's like this big JSON blob.

We are using an email service
provider called Resend.

That, lets you just
send arbitrary headers.

So we send over headers that include
this is the idea of the project and

the idea of the estimate and the
idea of the recipient in the headers.

And then in the webhook, we say, we
store off the message and say okay,

this, yeah, this message was opened and.

If it's, something that needs approval,
if they clicked on the link, then

we, we're tracking all that stuff.

So that's been interesting to track down.

There's this thing inside of rails
where I thought that the return

value from the mail method inside
of a mailer would give you back some

object that was like the response
from the API from the mail service.

But, what I discovered was that.

That doesn't really give you back the
thing that you want and it's all async.

And so the way that you can handle
it is by, putting in an observer.

So in an initializer inside of
rails, you can create a class that is

registered as an observer on active
mailer base, and that can have.

Like certain class methods that are called
within the life cycle of mail being sent.

And within there, you can check to
see Oh, was the message delivered?

And if so, you get like
stuff about the message.

So like the ID from the third party that
identifies that message so that you can

.
Store in your own database.

This was an outbound transactional
email and then tie back all

these events to that thing.

working on that, it's been
pretty fun to build out.

and yeah, still.

Playing around with Twilio.

So we'll have to talk about that
in more detail when we get there.

But,

Colin: Are you guys using anything
similar to a segment type of tool?

CJ: not yet we're, yeah, we're building
all of the evented stuff internally.

so we're just, we actually were
using your webhook stuff that you

talked about at RailsConf with Chris.

So inside of jumpstart, there
is an inbound webhook thing and

there's some command where you can
just say rails G inbound webhook.

Service and it spins up
your inbound webhook.

There's a couple of things I added to it.

but that's been killer.

uh, the, Oh, the other thing that's been
really killer from jumpstart is you can

say rails G API API client, and then you
just say, boom, here's the third party,

and then it's, it like scaffolds out like
the class that you would probably build.

What are these headers and what's
the base URL and what's a get and

what's a post and what's a whatever.

And then you can just get down to the
business of writing your method that

fetches the list of locations or, yeah,
I'm using the Google places API to geo

code and then we're using the directions
API to send the address of the office.

And here's the address of the client's
house so that we know like how many

minutes in drive time is it to that place?

Because we might reject a
project if it's too far away.

Colin: Interesting.

CJ: yeah, it's been,

Colin: So if you could just, that Rails
generate API needs like, open API spec and

a little, little GPT magic in there and
it could just figure it all out for you.

CJ: Yeah, Mike, I think is going
down the route of exploring

how we might do open API,

Colin: It's one of those things
like once the client's built,

you really don't need it.

So it's a little gimmicky, but like,
you know, uh, end points you need.

From Google places.

So it's nice to just be
like, okay, here's my class.

Here's my end point.

But if you end up integrating with a
bunch of things, like that was kind of the

dream with cloud snap, or there's a bunch
of tools today that I don't know if the

market's like fully embracing the idea of
paying a company to be like even segment.

It's an expensive way of sending
your data to a bunch of places.

Like segment itself does not do
much, like it does a lot, but it

doesn't let you see your data.

You got to send it to somewhere else
so that you can see that user journey

and amplitude or something like that.

CJ: Yeah.

Right now, a lot of this stuff is being
built in house, but I think as we grow

and we want to sort of unlock stuff for
non technical teams, Oh, if you want to

use Zapier to do something really fancy.

With your entire team and we
don't have time to build it.

Maybe we'll build a Zapier integration
that just hooks into all of our

evented life cycle, like event life
cycles for projects and things.

But for now, we're just building
everything as fast as we can natively.

And then integrating with the third
parties that we need data from, or we're

sending data to, and that's kind of it.

So

Colin: yeah, I find that usually
to be better, so that's good.

CJ: Very cool.

What are you learning this week?

Colin: Yeah, so the topic of learning
for this week's episode, when we

were putting together the show
notes, I have been putting this on

our list to talk to for a few weeks.

and it's a tool, more of a
framework called Diataxis.

and the website is diataxis.

fr.

We'll put a link for it in
the show notes because it's a,

it's an interesting spelling.

but it's a way of like organizing your
way of thinking about documentation.

And so the why I thought this might be
interesting is for us to talk about like

how we learn things because what this
framework gives us is four different ways

of organizing different kinds of content.

And, obviously you're no stranger to this.

At Stripe, but there's different
ways of displaying things like

you have an API reference.

The reference itself like
doesn't teach you anything.

Like when I end up on the Ruby on Rails
or like a pure Ruby like method doc

page, I'm like, what am I looking at?

If I've never called that thing
before, like even learning

how to read a reference doc.

is a skill because you,
it looks like Greek.

like even if you know the language,
you're like, I don't know what all

these things are that this function
takes or this class, represents.

so it breaks it down into four
areas, which is tutorials, how to

guides, explanation, and reference.

And those first two kind of sound.

It's very, very similar, but, and I'm
not going to give a full rundown of

like what all the differences are, but
if you're interested in being able to

organize this, if you're working on
your own docs, if you're working on

even thinking about yeah, I need, oh,
that's reference, that's how to guide.

it's pretty clarifying, like we're
going through and I think most

people are like, Oh, a tutorial and
a how to guide are the same thing.

But a how to guide would be
like very, very specific.

Like some of the stuff you're doing
with this email stuff, it's like,

this is the guide for click tracking.

Nothing else, right?

It, it, it's goal oriented.

It's not like you already know how
to code, you already know how to

send an email, but you had this
very real world specific example.

Whereas a tutorial is more like, we're
going to build our first bot today.

And through those processes, you're going
to learn all the things you need to know

about the ecosystem, of building a bot.

And we're not going to talk about
hosting, we're not going to talk

about all these different things
that should be how to guides instead.

CJ: Got it.

Yeah, this is really useful for
kind of organizing different styles

of tutorials and documentation.

I just said tutorials, but I
meant yeah, documentation and

it's, it gets so conflated.

And I do remember we had.

really not heated arguments, but
we had many discussions that were

very passionate at Stripe about what
belongs where, because when I joined

in 2019, if you went to stripe.

com slash docs, these are
the docs for developers.

If you're not a software developer,
then you should probably go read

something else and otherwise this is
for you teaching you how to integrate.

But over time, as Stripe released products
that moved up the stack from developer

to no coder, to if you were technical,
you can wire stuff up and get it going.

We had to evolve that docs content to
support lots of different personas.

And that became really challenging
because people would come in, find

some of what they were looking for.

But either it wasn't using the dashboard
and at some point just expected you to

start making API calls or vice versa.

And a lot of times in the CSAT comments
that we would get that people would

submit at the bottom, it would be
like, I'm not a techie programmer.

What is this?

Blah, blah, blah.

It's Oh, actually, like these
docs were meant for developers.

They're not like for non.

Developers.

And so we had another section that was
like the knowledge base and that was

kind of like in the support center.

And this is, you know, how do I send
an invoice from the Stripe dashboard?

And that was a completely separate thing.

And then.

similarly, we have like
several different references.

There's like the API reference
for the HTTP, rest API.

Then there was a reference for Stripe JS,
which is the like front end JavaScript

SDK, then there was another reference
for the Stripe CLI, which is the command

line interface that uses all this stuff.

So figuring out where all those
things live within the Stripe docs

was always a challenge and I like this
sort of organization and breakdown.

So does this Diataxis thing, does it tell
you, is it more like a way to figure out

how you should organize your own content?

Colin: Yeah, it's more of a loose
guideline for being able to talk to

your team without just like those
heated arguments you have a thing to,

to, Point to, and so there's like an
axis of practical to theoretical and

then learning and goals basically.

So like outcomes are like how
to guides and reference learning

is more of the tutorial.

And then maybe you might
have an explanation.

So explanations might be like, like
we have a web socket gateway, right?

You might just want to
have a why, what, when.

And how does the gateway work
and why do we use WebSockets?

It's to deepen your understanding.

You don't need to know all of the
things about the gateway to use it,

but you eventually will want to deepen
your knowledge so that you can use

it in ways that like, you're like,
Oh, I wonder if I could do this.

And you're like, yeah, you can.

the being able to send an invoice is
a great example because you're right.

Someone as an end user might.

have land on a page and they want to
just know how to do it from the UI.

How do you do it in the rest API?

How do you do it in the SDKs?

Like, those are all different things
that you're going to get hits on.

And part of learning and as a
developer, it's like deciphering what

page you landed on to see if it's
the right thing you're looking for.

and.

We can try to help.

I think Cloudflare, Cloudflare's
documentation all uses this framework.

if that's a pretty good example of going
and looking at one that already has

followed this, and then you brought up.

which I'll let you explain a
little bit about this, that there's

different learning styles within that.

So are you a visual learner or an auditory
or are you more of a kinesthetic learner?

And it's even as a content creator,
it's do you put out just audio?

Do you just put out video?

Is it, you know, is audio work in YouTube
form where it's me watching your screen?

Or is it a, do I need to get out like
Excalipad or something and draw it, right?

It's going to be.

Very, very different.

you know, when you're talking about
a database on a podcast, it's,

it, not everyone learns that way.

and I know some of the things that
we talk about on here with like

headers and APIs, doesn't translate
to radio all that well, but we're

also not trying to teach it to you.

We're trying to just chat about, you know,
what, what frustrates us, what excites us

CJ: terms of learning
styles, I remember thinking.

Growing up, Oh, I, I'm a bad reader at
some point, like someone had told me

like, you're not like good at reading.

And then I, that sort of stuck with
me and became like maybe part of my

identity through early adulthood and
just feeling Oh man, I don't, I wish

I knew, I wish I knew how to read
so that I could like, absorb as much

information that other people are getting.

And then about two years into college,
I started watching YouTube videos.

And learning I would do the open
courseware for linear algebra from

MIT and use that to supplement what I
was doing at like in college at UNR.

And I was like, Holy smokes.

if there's videos for everything,
that's like my preferred learning style.

And then I just started finding as
many video based training things as I

could and just like soaking them up.

And I think, I mean, these learning styles
are a little bit interesting because

it's kind of broken up into visual.

if you have visual and auditory, right?

Like visual might also be like
someone who reads something.

And so like, I didn't really identify
as someone that was strong visual, but

watching a video is definitely visual.

and yeah, maybe it was the
combination of the audio visual

together that worked really well.

I also tend to listen to tons of
audio books, but for me, I think

figuring out that my primary
learning style is auditory.

My secondary is visual was really, really
core in figuring out, the kind of content

to seek out in order to learn that thing.

but yeah, it's been interesting.

To think about too, when teaching,
like how do you present the content

in a way that can adjust and be
useful to people of all three of

these different learning styles?

so yeah, like embedding videos in the
docs that have, tutorials and how to

guides and even some explanation, I think.

Is the future.

We'll see if that, plays out
because video is very hard to

maintain in terms of documentation.

But, yeah, what kind of a learning style
would you say that you tend towards?

Colin: I think, yeah, I mean,
it's all, all three for me in that

I would need to watch a video.

And then reinforce it like kinesthetic
in this case would be like learning by

doing so, we're not dealing with like
things you can really touch with your

hands, but like I need to just try it.

and so sometimes you can get that with
like actually crunchy data is a good

example They have this like postgres
sandbox and they have a little tutorial

next to it So they're explaining it in
a written form and then you're actually

writing the queries And like I actually
had, you know using database indexes

forever, but i'm like I really Don't
understand these as well as I should

like, or like primary and secondary
indexes or, all these different things.

Like why, why is this
query taking so long?

Those kinds of things.

And so you get to learn by doing and
they're like, we're going to spin up a,

like a docker container with a shit ton of
data and you get to see it versus me just

telling you like, Oh yeah, if you don't
do that, it's going to take a long time.

You're like, okay, I heard it, but I
didn't feel the pain of it because I've

never had to feel the pain of it myself.

and I think what you were talking
about with algebra, like when

you go to school, you don't get
to choose your teacher, right?

You sometimes you do, you're lucky,
but you're still getting that it

taught from one perspective, one
angle, and it's their teaching style.

So if you can supplement it
with these other styles, you

get different perspectives.

That's sometimes just like a few
degrees off that then allow you to also

absorb what the teacher was teaching.

Whereas before there
was like no light bulb.

And I had that, like when I
actually in college, got a, it

was basically, I basically almost
failed out of my Algebra class.

And I was like, the next time I
retook it to replace the grade.

And I basically just went to every
office hour and I was like, okay.

I heard you.

I don't understand you.

let's do it.

And that might've been the
more kinesthetic, let's

actually do it together.

No one else is at office hours, so
I'm going to use it, as that time.

And with being able to go look at
YouTube and watch four people explain

it in slightly different ways, you
build a better worldview for it.

Obviously you have to do that
for everything you learn.

It's going to take you a really
long time to learn stuff, but.

I almost wonder if you get this a little
bit and then the Stripe docs, you get

the written form, there might be a video
and then there's like a sample app, which

is probably the more kinesthetic way.

CJ: hmm, Mm hmm, Yeah.

It's also when I am teaching
something, sometimes I get blocked.

I'm like, I don't want to post
this video because Someone

else has already taught it.

Right.

And, oh, there's already a rails
cast about this or go right.

Chris has already covered this on go
rails and five videos, but then I'll end

up doing it in maybe the difference too,
is that that might be a how to guide

and I'm doing a tutorial or vice versa.

But also it could just be like, literally
I'm saying the words that I would say to

explain it and they say the words they
would use to explain it and different

people are going to resonate with that.

So the take, the big
takeaway there is like.

Don't ever hesitate to put out content,
teaching people something that you

feel like you have a little bit more
knowledge of than they might have,

because it's going to help somebody.

Colin: I've noticed that almost
everything, like when I was learning

Terraform, there is a lot of getting
started guides, like a lot, like every,

everyone who found Terraform and loved it
wrote a blog post on how to get started.

And then it just ends.

And I'm like, but I'm trying to do.

the fourth thing that everyone
needs to do with this thing.

And there's like no tutorial for it.

There's no guide.

There's no.

And so I've always thought about that.

yeah, I think it's easy to look at YouTube
and others and be like, there's already

so many people teaching out there, sure.

Put out a getting started guide, but.

Take it to the next one.

Like some of the best
things that I've seen.

I actually found someone on Twitter.

I'll have to find them and link them,
but I think they're a CTO at a company

and they wrote this great blog post.

Ever since they read about the library of
Alexandria and it burning down, they've

always just been fascinated with that
idea of like knowledge disappearing.

And so they got this remarkable tablet.

It's kind of like a
Kindle writable tablet.

And they downloaded all of the current,
like the most recent version of Wikipedia

and put it like offline on this tablet.

So now it's like all Wikipedia
in the palm of your hand offline.

hopefully you can still charge it if
there's some like post apocalyptic event.

Right.

But now you have all the knowledge
in the palm of your hand.

And I just thought like it was such a
detailed, description of things that it's

like, you would not find that elsewhere.

They also hacked a Casio watch to just be
like, To be a two F a, number generator.

And so like at any given time, it's
just constantly showing four numbers

and then it would recycle them.

And it was like very, very low level C
and, but it was like maybe four lines

of code and a little, like a little,
chip that I don't know if they had to

replace it or rewrite it or what they
did, but it's just like that level of

detail, like it was so fascinating.

And I learned, like, I wasn't planning
on learning about those things that

CJ: Mm hmm.

Colin: I did.

And I followed the rabbit holes of
like, okay, how did he figure out,

what he had to change in the watch
and does it still work as a watch?

I'm trying to figure out where
we're probably going to start doing

videos at work, but I wanted to
start doing my own personal ones.

Maybe streaming, streaming is a
little more intimidating to me, but

Even I'm sure if you hit go, like no
one's watching, so it doesn't need to

be, but, you don't get to edit, you
don't get to work through that stuff.

CJ: hmm.

Colin: yeah, so this is actually
a little bit of an older book, but

I highly recommend it if you're
interested in all this stuff out there.

it is, the sub head is refactoring
your wetware, by Andy hunt.

So it.

is literally like a software
developers approach to thinking

about neuroscience and how we learn.

it's a book I go back to probably every
four or five years just to rethink

about how I learn, but also this was,
I think I found it when I was doing

quite a bit of teaching in person.

So it's, There's a model in there called
the Dreyfus model around how we learn.

So I think like one of the good
things that someone wrote down

was like, you learn how your brain
works and then you learn how to use

your brain to learn more things.

so it's if your brain has bugs
in it, how do you refactor?

How do you get around those?

And maybe it's not a
bug you can solve for.

maybe it's just like, how
do you get more focus?

How do you get more
attention, especially now?

I don't think, I mean, this book was
written before our phones were really,

really fighting for our attention.

So I'm sure Andy could do a
revisit on this book for sure.

But you know, how do you go from
being a novice at something to being

an expert where I'm sure you felt
this, but there's a point where

you just cross the threshold that.

You don't, there's not,
it's not like a video game.

There's no, like you didn't level up,
but all of a sudden you're like, I

actually understand how this is working.

It's like awesome feeling.

And you still will have to check the docs.

You'll still have to Google things or
chat GVT things, but, but you can get it.

It done and I think that's
it's a good book for that

CJ: Very cool.

I'm going to pick that up.

That's awesome.

Yeah, I love, thinking about just
neuroscience in general is just

like really interesting, right?

and also I feel like we
don't know a ton about it.

So every time I get into it, I
love, learning about how we learn.

Colin: Yeah, and if you're interested
in this stuff and you want to read a

neuroscience book that's like Hard to
find things that are similar like that

we can relate to So like coming at it
as a software developer from a software

developer definitely helps with that

CJ: Amazing.

I think that might be a wrap

Colin: the learning episode

CJ: the learning episode, learn,
learn to learn, and then you'll learn

Colin: Yes

CJ: always.

You can head over to build and learn.

dev to check out all the links
and resources in the show notes.

Thanks so much for listening.

Colin: All right, we'll see you next time.

CJ: Bye friends.