Learning Fluency
summary
Argues that fluency builds understanding and shows concrete practice instead of vague immersion: a Middlebury regimen with daily ting xie dictations, memorizing 100 words a night in chunks of five, five nights a week for eight weeks. Connects that drill-and-chunk method to coding: use IRB, GitHub, iterative projects, deliberate repetition and history of CS, and accepts public failures (code for Vermont Public Radio lives on GitHub even when it’s “garbage”) as part of disciplined fluency.
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chapters (18)
- 0:00Intro
- 1:50ernest hemingway
- 6:47building software is half strategy and half improvisation
- 8:31fluency is key
- 11:26project-based learning
- 13:21middlebury summer language program
- 16:32natural context
- 16:51practiced skill
- 17:27with intention, it works faster
- 19:10a kind of familiarity that only repeated and varied interaction with the parts can develop
- 20:22understanding doesn't build fluency; instead, fluency builds understanding.
- 20:58what's the algorithm for fluency?
- 21:30pace speed fluency
- 22:23open source news
- 24:53learning is hard.
- 27:40creativity and innovation both stem from an intense and intimate understanding of a system
- 28:18the disregard of rote memorization is a failure of imagination
- 29:17we can learn fluency
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