🧮 ChatGPT on a calculator?

Hey everybody,

In today’s edition, we’ll be taking a look at the dangers of cramming, boosting productivity in development, and driving impactful projects. Plus, we’ve got a fun ChatGPT experiment and key coding lessons from 10,000 hours of practice.

Quick Links

🤯 Chatgpt on a calculator
Don't let any of your teachers see this.

⏰ What 10,000 Hours of Coding Taught Me
Sotiris Kourouklis, a software engineer with 7 years of experience in backend, frontend, and DevOps, admits he doesn’t consider himself exceptional. He believes others are smarter and more experienced but he has picked up key tricks over the years. One of his biggest realisations is that being slow has helped him code faster, ship more, and boost overall productivity.

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🏗️ No One Builds in Public
Laike9m, a Google software engineer, recently joined the Indie Hacker community and noticed a trend: everyone talks about "building in public." This popular practice involves openly sharing product development and revenue. However, laike9m points out the irony: when everyone builds in public, nobody builds in public.

💻️ Forget ChatGPT: why researchers now run small AIs on their laptops
Chatbots powered by large language models have impressed with their poetry writing and conversational skills. Some of these LLMs have hundreds of billions of parameters, making them highly complex but only accessible online. However, two key trends are emerging: open weights LLMs, allowing users to download and run models locally, and scaled-down versions that run on consumer hardware while matching the performance of older, larger models. Thorpe, a researcher in the UK, is one of many exploring the potential of these tools.

🚗 Driving a Project at Slack
Sravya Nagalakunta, a Software Engineering Intern at Slack, shared insights in a blog about driving a project independently during an internship. She offers tips on delivering meaningful work, sharpening skills, showcasing abilities, and fostering personal growth throughout the process.

Research

Learning 101: The Untaught Basics

Junaid Qadir and Muhammad Ali Imran

This is a summary of a research paper outlining learning techniques that I’ve noticed consistently appear in other studies.

Access to information has never been easier. But despite all the resources at our fingertips, many students still struggle to learn effectively. The problem? Most of us are relying on flawed, intuitive approaches to learning that feel right but fail us in the long run. Cramming before a big exam might lead to a temporary boost in confidence, but the knowledge gained quickly fades away.

Our minds are wired to seek short-term results, which creates a dangerous illusion of fluency. This happens when you feel like you’ve mastered a concept simply because you’ve spent a lot of time reviewing it in one go.

What’s needed instead is a shift in how we approach learning altogether, a move away from ineffective practices like massed studying or passive rereading.

Learning, at its core, is not about doing more in a short time; it's about building understanding slowly, integrating it deeply, and ensuring it sticks. And to achieve that, science offers some clear solutions that often go against our instincts.

1. Spaced Learning: Slow and Steady Wins the Race

The key to long-term learning isn’t cramming—it’s spacing out your sessions over time. Spaced learning works by forcing your brain to repeatedly retrieve information, strengthening your memory with each recall.

Much like muscles grow through rest cycles between workouts, the brain needs intervals to consolidate and solidify knowledge. Research has shown that spaced practice leads to better retention and understanding, because you’re pulling knowledge from deeper in your memory rather than relying on short-term familiarity.

2. Interleaving: Mix It Up for Better Mastery

Instead of focusing on one topic or skill until it’s fully mastered, interleaving encourages you to switch between different subjects or types of problems. This might feel more challenging because your brain has to work harder to recall the right method for each new problem.

But that struggle is the key: it helps you better understand how and when to apply different techniques. Interleaving makes learning harder in the short term, but it leads to more durable knowledge and stronger problem-solving skills.

3. Testing: The Secret Weapon for Retention

While many students dread quizzes or exams, testing is one of the most powerful learning tools available. Rather than being a mere evaluation method, testing, or retrieval practice, forces you to actively pull information from your memory, which strengthens those neural connections.

Studies show that testing is far more effective than rereading or reviewing notes. Even self-testing, using flashcards or quizzes, can significantly improve retention and help identify areas where you need more practice.

In fact, retrieval is a memory modifier, each time you successfully recall information, you’re making it easier to retrieve in the future.

4. Variety: Learning in Diverse Contexts

Finally, adding variety to your practice helps your brain adapt to using knowledge in different situations. Just as athletes benefit from cross-training, learners benefit from practicing skills in different contexts and under varied conditions.

This broadens your ability to apply what you’ve learned in real-world scenarios and prevents you from becoming too rigid in your thinking. The more ways you engage with the material, the more flexible and adaptable your knowledge becomes.

By shifting from cramming and passive review to scientifically-backed methods like spaced learning, interleaving, testing, and variety, you can transform your study habits.

I enjoyed reading this study, it’s quite short and digestible, you can find the full paper here.

🚨 State of Developer Relations 2024

I just released a new video diving into The State of DevRel Report 2024! In the video, I break down what Developer Relations is and highlight 10 key insights from the latest survey that you’ll find super useful.

Check it out and let me know your thoughts! Watch here: [link to video].

Until next week,

Travis.